♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we're two of the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today, we'll talk about arch supports, Brad.
- Yeah. - You know,
I'm seeing a lot of commercials on TV.
- Sure. - And they claim that
An arch support, "If you come into our shop,
we'll fit you and it will take away your back pain."
- Right. - And I didn't know
if that's true or not.
I mean, what does the study say?
- Right. - So I did some research.
- Good, let's find out what the-
- But before we talk about that,
let's talk about this. - Oh, yeah.
It's in the way anyways.
- Why do we have this in front of us?
- Yeah.
- It's a SleepOvasion mattress.
- That's right.
- At least it's just a sample of one.
SleepOvasion has actually 700 tiny mattresses
and some air channels and we're giving away
one of their mattresses. - Yeah.
- Quite a deal. - It is.
It is and definitely, you get one shipped to your house
and you can put it out and it's a high end mattress.
It's very competitive and we love 'em
because we sleep on 'em every night.
- Yup, I think we've had...
I have had one for maybe...
- Don't worry about it, nobody cares about it.
Let's just get on with the show.
- All right, so anyway, we're gonna
go through this one study.
It's actually a study of studies.
- Oh, a meta-analysis. - Meta-analysis, yes.
- How many studies did they group together?
- They, I don't remember. - Yeah.
It's called "For the Orthotics for Low Back Pain:
The State of Our Understanding
and Recommendations for Future Research".
- Really? - It was by would you say
Papagoo?
Papaga? - You want me
to try and pronounce that name?
- Papaga and Cambra.
Papaga, Papagoo (laughs) - Don't worry about, Bob.
We're here.
Probably hope he's got it.
- Brad and I always like meta-analysis
because basically it's a study of studies.
They look through PubMed and EBSCO,
Gale, Google Scholar, and clinical trials.
- Right, so it's a broad search of number of studies
and just see how they compare and contrast.
- So unfortunately, Brad, what they found
is that none of these were high quality studies.
(Brad wheezes) None of them.
- Wow. - So they cannot recommend
using the arch support. - Right.
- On the positive side,
they said there were some studies that were in, you know.
- Promoted it or indicated positive results?
- In trial right now. - Oh, I see.
You know, I have heard people say
they've put arch supports in and their back pain got better.
So either they're making it up or they just the studies...
- Right.
- You know, it's individual thing.
- You know, you have the placebo effect, you know,
where that comes to the place. - Right, yup.
- But I think, you know,
if you're gonna try an arch support,
Brad, what I recommend is that you don't pay for one
as far as like a custom made one.
- Yeah, they're very expensive.
- Yeah and we did find studies that showed
that custom made ones were not really any better
than ones that you get off the shelf.
- Right and there will be controversy on that.
- I know they were.
- Especially in the people who make 'em.
- Yeah, exactly.
Do you wanna kinda show what arch support does?
Why it might help back pain?
- Right, so these are two inserts.
Yet you pull outta your shoe, it's a little cushion
and this one is a flat insert.
It's not made to do any arch support.
I don't know if you can see this, zoom in on here.
So if my foot was in this shoe
and this arch support, there we go.
It's flat, there's no support on my arch.
There's an air gap in there
and so this is just a little cushion
on your heel and your forefoot.
This is not a true arch support insert,
but it will give you idea. - Demonstrate.
- [Brad] So you can see how this insert
comes up and supports the arch.
Now, if you have a true arch support insert,
there's gonna be cushion,
right where my fingers here and you'll feel that.
When you walk, you're gonna feel that support on the arch.
- So if you don't have good arch support
what can happen is the foot collapse in like this
and they could cause the knee to collapse in
which is gonna affect the pelvis
which is gonna affect the back.
- Uh-hmm. - Right?
- That's the idea. - It makes sense
that it possibly could help and plus, I think a arch support
gives you a little bit of cushioning when you walk.
- Yeah, I think, typically, they do have
cushion along with it.
- And you certainly recommend that a lot
is to put the cushion...
If you work on hard surfaces like cement.
- Yup.
- To go ahead and put a cushion in your shoe.
- Right, so that it takes that impact
and all your joints can be helped that way.
I gotta admit, I used to I'll have all my running shoes.
- I was the same.
- I would put a cushion arch support in there.
- Right. - You know, over the counter
and they weren't the cheap $5 ones.
They were a little bit better
and then I changed my whole running style
where now I don't use 'em at all.
I don't know if we want to get into that, but...
- No, we don't. - Good.
- So we do wanna talk about Stuart McGill did recommend
that walking, simple walking, can help your back pain.
- Right.
- It doesn't need arch sport for that.
- Right.
- All you're gonna do is he wants you to walk
three times a day, if you can
after every meal and for up to 15, 20 minutes,
but most of you could do that to start,
maybe you're gonna start with one time a day.
- Yup. - You might even start
by march in place and doing some stairs.
- Right and he even advocates
make sure you tighten up. - Right.
- Get your core line so your back feels good
and make sure you're cognizant
of that posture while you walk.
So you it's not just walking without thinking.
You gotta get your back into it.
- Right, do not increase your pain.
You do it in chunks where it's not painful.
So the other thing is you might try walking
at a higher speed. - Ah, yes.
- At a higher rate. - Right.
- You know, unfortunately, what they found
is that it actually takes some weight off your spine
when you walk a little faster
and I saw this happen in a lot of the patients of mine.
So the other thing is you want to have a good posture.
So what you might wanna do is grab your arms,
grab your wrist behind you and pull back.
So if you're bent over like this,
it's gonna pull you up and put you in a good posture
and then you walk forward or as you're walking.
- Right. - Wanna do that
once in a while. - Yup.
- Just to check where you're at.
So, you know, again, work up to it and you'll find out,
you know, the back has a lot of joints
and this helps kind of lubricate.
- Right. - It's kinda like the tin man.
- It gets some motion in there.
Motion is- - "The Wizard of Oz".
- Yeah.
- You know, he needs lubrication.
- Oh, yeah, cleaning and then he feels better
Yeah, whatever.
- And we got nature's natural lubrication.
- Synovial fluid and for a set joint,
each vertebra has two of those.
- You get blood flowing and you're gonna find out
your back pain is gonna do better if you can walk.
It was one of the first things we have patients do.
Make sure you're on a walking program.
- Right, not up and down hills though, on the flat.
- So arch support, maybe you might wanna try it.
Don't spend a lot of money.
- Yeah.
- Doing so and it should feel good in the foot.
- Right, it should feel good
and it should make your back feel, obviously.
- Don't let peoples tell you that,
"Oh, you gotta adjust to it." - Yeah.
- You know, when you put it in the shoe.
No, it should feel good right away.
- Yeah, I've had. - Yeah.
- Sales people do that in the shoe store then I leave.
- Right. - Or get another one.
- All right.
Remember, Brad, I can fix about anything.
- Except for. - What was it again, Brad?
- Yeah, yeah. - A broken heart.
- Oh, that's right.
- We can't fix a broken heart.
Everything else, you know,
shoulders, necks, backs, knees.
- But we will continue on this endeavor
and, you know, sooner or later we're gonna hit the jackpot.
- Yup. - We patent it, too.
- We'll probably get it by accident. (Brad wheezes)
So, all right, thanks.
(bright notes)