(intro music)
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, a physical therapist.
I can say it.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Because we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Now what threw me off, Brad,
is I'm on the right side here,
I'm not used to being over here.
It even throws my language off.
- Well don't worry about it, Bob,
you have to get used to it.
- Today, Top Seven Exercises for Leg Edema, or Swelling.
This is a program or protocol that we actually use
for patients that, when they have leg edema,
and they're going home,
these are the exercises they can do.
You can do them in bed, or you can do them seated.
We're gonna show you both ways.
It's actually better to do them in bed.
- Gravity's working with you.
- Gravity's working with you, right.
But before we do that, if you're new to our channel,
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Brad's really gonna be the lazy man on this video.
- That's right.
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- Oh you wanna do it, huh?
I wanna get rid of it, Bob, I've got a place for it.
- Alright, good for you.
Alright, so with edema, or swelling.
What often is gravity is pulling fluid from everywhere
in your body, and it often settles
in your calf, and ankles, and feet.
So we wanna get, the thing is,
if you wanna get rid of fluid,
it's not gonna go out your toes.
It's gotta go back up into your truck,
where it gets processed, and then it gets expelled
from the body.
In other words, you urinate, or pee, it out.
- Right.
- To be graphic.
We gotta get the fluid back up into this area,
so that's why it works really well
if you can take a leg wedge,
we often recommend this for back pain, too.
Or if you just take some pillows and put them
underneath your feet,
and get your feet up higher
than your heart if possible.
That's doing a pretty good job.
But also, you can do these in a seated position.
They're still gonna help.
They just won't be quite as effective.
- Sure.
- So we got the Seven Exercises, let's get started, Brad.
Before we do,
quite often you wanna do a little bit
of deep diaphragmatic breathing,
which kind of clears the area here.
If you know how to do diaphragmatic breathing,
or as a review,
when you breath in, your abdomen is actually expanding,
and that opens up the diaphragm.
So when Brad breaths in, you can see how it's expanding.
When he breaths out, it actually goes down.
That's the opposite of what people quite often think.
A lot of times they think,
When I breath in my chest should go up,
and it's actually, you want your diaphragm to go out.
So five quick breaths,
and then we go on and start the exercises.
So the first one,
just to get a little movement in the abdomen here,
we're actually just gonna do flexing forward here,
for five times.
I'm sorry, these are all 10-15 times, actually,
let's stick with 15 times.
- Okay.
Yep.
- So you're just gonna come forward a little bit here.
Very easy to do.
15 times.
We'll say we're up to 15, alright?
- Sure.
- So people can follow along.
Number two, you're actually gonna rotate the trunk
using your hips.
Brad's gonna go ahead and do that.
He's gonna use the hips,
I'm actually gonna rotate like this, in the chair,
going back and forth.
You're gonna put your hands together like this.
Again the idea is you're going
Well why am I,
I'm trying to get fluid out of my legs,
why am I working on my trunk?
You've gotta clear the drain, basically.
- Right.
- If the drain is plugged,
the fluid is not gonna be able
to go up into the body and be processed.
- One metaphor, or whatever,
that I heard from Aaron, who's certified,
he said imagine your bellybutton is the drain,
and that's where the fluid has to get up to.
So we wanna clear the area here first,
so it's not like a dam preventing that fluid
from your legs and ankles to come up this way.
We're starting here and working down that way.
- I've definitely seen that on patients
where there was a dam.
Actually once we cleared it up here,
the fluid started to go down.
Alright next one, Brad, is butt squeezes.
On this one you're not gonna be able to see me do it really,
but I'm just squeezing my butt together.
Again, you wanna hold it for like three seconds,
and we're gonna go up to 15.
Okay next one,
marching in place.
So Brad, he's just doing hip flexion, unilaterally,
going back and forth.
Good, 15 times, you got it, number?
- Oh yeah, we're good.
- Then we do kick outs.
There you go, yep.
Excellent.
Brad, you're a good student.
- Well, I've been practicing, Bob.
- Yeah.
- I really would like to say,
you can certainly use pillows,
but if you're gonna be doing this for any length of time,
this leg wedger's not that expensive,
and it's much more comfortable, and they work better
than a pillow, for sure.
- You wanna make sure that's linked down below,
that they know where to get that,
because this is a handy thing
that you could even fall asleep on if you have edema.
And that would help matters.
Next one, just do some ankle pumps.
- I'm doing alternating, Brad's doing,
well you were...
Either way.
- Well, I like doing alternating,
but I can do it think way, too.
- This is one you can do throughout the day,
even when you're standing,
you can do some ankle pumps like this.
And the final one is just wiggle your toes.
- Yep.
- Just start wiggling the toes.
This little piggy went to the market, right Brad?
- Oh, Bob, why Bob?
Why?
- This little piggy said
Why Bob, why Bob, all the way home.
- But you can clearly see, we started with these,
and we worked the muscles here,
and we just went down the way.
- To be honest, Brad, what you should do
is you wanna go that way,
and the next time, if you wanna do a full thing,
you go down and then come back again.
Or the next time, start at the toes, and then go all up.
- Okay.
- So, just to mix it up a little bit,
and get the fluid moving, so.
- Good luck with your edema.
Hopefully we're gonna get that resolved.
Remember, Brad and I can fix just about anything.
- Except for...
- A broken heart,
put it right over Brad.
- Yeah.
(imitates heartbeat)
pounding away.
- Alright, thanks for watching.