♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Good day to be alive.
Hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, a physical therapist.
- Brad Heinich, physical therapst.
- We're the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course. Bob.
- We're gonna talk about back pain relief,
using a TENS.
There's no side effects.
TENS is Trancutaneous Electrical Neuromuscular Stimulation,
or nerve stimulation, whichever one --
- And, Bob, that's all not important,
but what is important, it works fast.
As soon as you put it on, if it works for you,
it works right now.
- It's not like a pain medication,
takes 30-40 minutes to kick in.
This is gonna kick in right away.
- And, no side effects.
- No side effects, right.
- Very good, I've had patients where they just loved these.
I've had some that they don't care for it,
cause they don't respond to it, too.
But, if you're a person that responds well to the TENS,
you're very, very happy you have it.
- It's a nice tool, Yes
- to have in your tool box.
- Exactly.
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You know that, Brad?
- Yes, I do.
We are a little crazy, there ya go.
So, TENS units, okay.
Right now I have a TENS unit set up.
It's on my back, I'm using four electrodes,
and I really like the feel of TENS units.
I'm one of those people that respond,
and it's right now.
So, I'm gonna show you hot to do it,
but before we go any further,
I want to emphasize, you know, with opiods,
if you're taking long-term, for chronic pain,
and you're taking pain meds,
and you're having side effects,
or you just do not want to deal with the potential
of being an opiod,
- Well, you could be dependent upon them.
- Right, yep, yep, you could get addicted to them.
- I've seen, in my life,
my mother-in-law became dependent upon them.
It was really a difficult situation to overcome.
- The statistics are going up and up and up,
so this is a good answer to it.
So, with the TENS unit, now the big term
you mentioned before, TENS stands for
Transcutaneous Electical Neuromuscular Stimulation.
- Or it could be Nerve Stimulation,
I've read it, too.
- TENS unit sounds better, (laughs) a little easier,
and this is what a TENS unit looks like.
There's different manufacturers,
but they're all about this size, now.
They'll have the wires going off to the electrodes,
or the leads.
This was made by iReliev.
We really like these guys, they know TENS.
They're in the business,
they have a whole bunch of different models.
I really like this one, the 8080,
because it has TENS, and it also has NMS,
Neuromuscular stimulation.
- Right, which is a little stronger.
That's not for pain, that's for strengthening muscles.
We're not gonna get into that on this video.
- But, it's rechargeable, that's what I like about it.
You don't have to worry about
having new batteries all the time.
- Right, and having a drawer full of all these batteries,
then you've gotta figure out which ones are new,
and which ones are old.
Sometimes you go through that little rigamarole.
So, this is a nice device.
They do have a quick reference chart,
because anytime you get a TENS unit,
there's gonna be a manual in there,
and they go into quite a bit of detail
about how it works, and it gets pretty involved,
and a little overwhelming.
So, this really cuts to the chase.
- Right, and you can just follow the simple directions.
You'll get to where you want to be.
- Once you use it, two or three times,
maybe a couple more times, you'll have it memorized.
You won't need this anymore,
and you'll just go to work with it.
So, Bob, should be show 'em?
I've got a --
- You want to show how they're hooked up, first?
- Yeah, let's show 'em, what do you say?
Well, you just wanna
- Be careful, don't show too much, Bob.
- So, you see, we marked this area off.
This isn't a mole on Brad,
this is an area that I marked using a marker
And this indicates the pain area.
We just surrounded the pain area using electrodes.
Now, you could just use two.
- Right
- You put one on each side,
but in this case, this seems to be a very effective way
to hit the area, is to surround the area,
keeping the electrodes at a healthy pace apart,
so that they're not touching, of course.
- Right, and then also you wanna make sure,
if you're gonna use, if we just used two,
we'd cross the pain with just two electrodes.
I can't see 'em, Bob.
And, if you want to get more aggressive,
or more comprehensive with masking the pain, so to speak,
then you'll put two here, from one channel.
There's two channels on here.
And then, the other two --
- From that channel.
- Yes, so, if you draw a line between the two channels,
they'll cross right where the main pain is located.
- You can really experiment with this.
I mean, you could put one on the area of pain,
if you wanted to.
- Sure
- One on, one off, and sometimes,
if the pain's going down your leg,
you can hit down your leg.
I mean, there's just, there's really no really wrong answer.
You don't want it on the spine itself,
- Sure, right
- But you want to have it off to the side,
but there's not, and they go over that in great detail.
- Right, the book and whatnot has more.
So, that's a good example, back pain.
Right there, I have it,
and that's typically where I do have mine,
so I've got it located there.
And now, what I'd like to go through,
is just a quick little tutorial of how this unit works.
I'm gonna get up a little closer here.
Alright, how does that, give Liz a chance to focus on this.
Does it look good?
So, you hit On button, and after three seconds or so,
it turns on.
There we go.
- Nice lighted screen.
- Yep, and now we're gonna hit Mode.
Now, here we've got TENS.
We can choose TENS, or EMS. Okay?
We're gonna stick with TENS, hit Mode again.
Now, there's eight settings you can pick on this.
- So, you can see the Setting is flashing right now.
We're up to P4, P5, all the way up to to P8.
- Right, now I've experimented with this,
and I know I like P3, it really feels good to me,
and it really covers that pain up.
- They're all quite different.
And they all have a little different reasoning behind them.
- I'm gonna go over that
in just a little bit. - Oh, you are, okay.
- And then, the minutes, it goes from five minutes
to 60 minutes, in increments of five.
We'll go 20 minutes, okay?
Then hit Mode again, now it's ready to turn on.
So I'm gonna go to channel one.
If you look, you can see channel one right there.
That's these two electrodes off of this one,
and I'm going to turn it up,
so I'm going to hit plus.
See the number, that's the intensity,
or the amount of current running through there,
in milliamps.
- The thing I found about this unit is it's strong.
I'm surprised you're able to go up to an eight, even.
- Well, I do tolerate TENS pretty well,
and this goes up way beyond that.
I'm gonna go up to 12, and I feel a pretty good sensation.
And, again, to me it feels like it's vibrating,
it's constant, and it feels like a gentle pressure.
It feels good, I really like it.
And now, I'm gonna go to channel two,
there's channel two,
so now I'm gonna energize the other channel.
And, we're gonna, whoo, now I felt it right there.
I'm not gonna go so high on this one,
and I can feel it cover more area, over the back,
- Because they're both working now.
Both channels are working - Yeah, and it feels like
a nice gentle pressure.
- That's interesting,
you're all the way up to 12 on the other one.
On this one, you're already feeling it at five.
- Right, you know, it may depend
on how far the electrodes are apart,
because of the current capability,
how it transfers through the skin and whatnot.
So, now, what I'm going to do,
I'm gonna get back to here,
and now I'm gonna,
I locked it, you see a little key there.
That means, right now, you can push any button on there,
and nothing will happen, because I've locked it.
What that does,
that's because if you put this in your pocket,
or on your belt, and you lean into something,
and maybe you lean on the Plus button accidentally,
and the (laughing) voltage and current goes way up,
it wakes you up.
- What about if you want to turn it off, emergency-wise?
Do you know how to do that once it's locked,
or can't you turn it off, once it's locked?
- Once it's locked, that's a good question, Bob.
You have to unlock it.
- You hit lock again, it's the on and off button together?
- Right, you have to hit Plus and Minus together,
- Gotcha
- And there it locks on.
- And there you can lock on, lock off.
- Lock on, lock off, and then you turn it down,
there we go.
And then, it's timing down, it's down to 19, now.
When it goes to zero, it just turns off,
and that's fine.
- I suspect if you're a younger person,
used to working with electronics,
you're gonna find this very, very easy.
If you're older, like us,
it might take a little bit of tutorial time.
- Well, just to get through all this,
but I'm just gonna leave mine on.
I'm think I'm gonna lock it on.
- But understand this, Brad is not a tech guy, at all.
- Although I do understand electricity
much better - understand electricity, yes
- Cause I did that for ten years of my life,
- You understand that better than I do,
but you don't understand technology, overall.
- Software is what I don't understand.
There's a difference between electricity and electronics.
I know electricity.
Electronics and software,
back in the 80s and 90s, when that transfer happened,
that's when I got into therapy (laughing)
instead of electrical business.
So, anyway, that's another story.
So, I'm continuing here.
Oh, Bob,
- Yes
- I do wanna mention,
now, for a visual on the modes, P1 through P8,
- I'll make sure that you can see this
- Okay, now I like P3, it's a constant sensation on there.
It feels like it's buzzing,
and there's that little pressure.
Now, if this is power, if I turn the power up.
This is where I have it, see this is at 12,
and this is time, it's a constant sensation,
where you have the electrodes.
- That's P3, and you're comparing it to P6 here.
- Right, and then I went to P6,
and the way the sensation on that is,
you feel it ramp up, and then it ramps down,
and it turns off, and then a couple seconds later,
ramps up, ramps down,
and this ramp up and down takes about two or three seconds,
so it's a gradual increase, down, turns off.
Gradual increase, down, turns off.
And, they had it, this is how it mapped out on the book.
On the manual, they'll show you in this format,
just so you understand that, when you do work through that.
- And, then the other ones, the other six,
are variations of that.
- Yep, sometimes it goes up quickly, goes across,
and then it turns off quickly, instead of a ramp.
- Some of 'em are like a burst, right?
- Right, there's a burst mode.
- Like a machine gun, almost?
- Yeah, and that's why I say for my patients,
just kind of play with it, and test,
and experiment on each mode,
and then see which one feels best to you,
and then go with that one.
Sometimes, they might use that, like, say P3,
I might use it for a week,
and your body can acclimate.
- It adapts to it, yeah.
- So, then, you might wanna find out another channel,
an option, and then use that,
and then it throws your --
- And, you may also find out that
you have to turn up the intensity more.
- Yep, even when you're using it, sometimes,
you'll find out your body kind of adapts to it,
acclimates, as you said.
- Yep, yep, good point.
So, I hope that helped you with the TENS unit,
and how it works.
- We've had some of our videos explain
how the TENS works, with the gates theory,
stimulates your natural --
- physiology
- natural endorphins and stuff like that,
Alright.
- Whoo
- Thanks, everybody, for watching.
- Be careful.