♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, Physical Therapist.
- Brad Heineck, Physical Therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet,
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- So, today, we're gonna show you how
to apply traction, decompression to the neck
or a pinched nerve with an over-the-door traction device.
It's inexpensive.
It's a different way to do it.
It's not a manual way where you're applying it yourself.
And it's not the most expensive way.
It'll work, but we have some guidelines here.
We want to show you what it looks like right here.
Now, just to start off and then we're gonna take it off.
But so, what you have is you have
a pulley system here, two pulleys.
This part slips up over your door.
So you gotta make sure it's a door
that's not being used
or someone's not gonna come through.
It comes down to a bag.
I actually have an extra weight on the bag
'cause I didn't want to fill up with water,
but the bag can be filled
up with anywhere up to 20 pounds of water.
And so you can apply 20 pounds of pressure.
This harness here is not the one that comes
with this unit.
I saw so many complaints about this harness,
the one that comes with the unit,
that I ordered this separately.
And it is a better harness,
but I thought this one was fine
to be honest with you.
I thought it fit me okay,
and I think people
were just putting it on wrong possibly.
So why don't you take it off right now, Brad.
We got a idea.
You may have to actually,
we can show this when you take it off.
You may actually have to face the unit.
'Cause I like the neck to be a little bit of flection,
like 20 degrees.
And what we should say right now,
what we're gonna highly suggest,
is that you do not try this on your own.
You should first get instruction
from a physical therapist or a chiropractor.
And once you've tried it
maybe two, three, four times
and you feel comfortable with it,
then you can purchase a home unit.
And they're only like $20.
I don't remember what.
If you got an extra harness,
it's gonna be more,
but then you can apply it on your own at home,
maybe with the help of a loved one or friend.
- Yeah, it's difficult to do these all by yourself.
It's much easier with a second person
and I've always recommended have a second person.
I've wore both of these, Bob,
and I agree that one I've always been able
to get the fit right.
This one is a little more comfortable.
- It is a little more comfortable.
- It's got this nice soft fabric in here.
- Plus it's made a lot better.
- Yeah.
- Now one thing, we believe the back,
if you look at this, both of these.
You should want to hold that one, Brad.
On both of these,
I believe where the straps are attached,
that goes to the back.
- Right, right.
- So in fact, I usually label these when I work
with the patient, so that they can see.
- Chin.
- Chin, yup.
- I have, as well.
- So if you put this on wrong, it may not fit right either.
And it's a little bit confusing.
I mean, look at this thing.
So it actually goes like this.
- Yeah.
- And these go up into the spreader bar,
which is this bar right here.
So we got the over-the-door unit part,
this slides over the door, we got the pulleys,
we got the rope,
we got the spreader bar and we got the bag.
You can fill up with, up to 20 pounds.
- Yeah, and this should be done with the door closed.
You don't keep the door open.
It kind of wiggles back and forth a lot.
- Have you done it?
- Yeah, 'cause if someone opens it up,
you're in big trouble.
- Yeah. Then it's a problem.
So yeah, this is a really nice cost effective unit,
but it's just a lot more hassle.
But once you get it figured out,
I've had people go home
and use them on a regular basis
after the instruction.
And they knew how much weight was gonna work
and you get a feel for it.
- Right.
- And your therapist may have you, like I said,
face the unit because we want your neck
to be slightly flexed forward.
- So that'd be the door, you're looking at the door.
And then the harness would be
on as it was at the beginning.
- Because the recommendations are like
about 15 to 20 degrees of flection,
or maybe 30 at the most.
But first off,
why would you determine whether or not traction
is even gonna help you?
So the first thing we do is we're gonna
do two tests that you can do at home by yourself.
You can go ahead and you're gonna first one,
you gonna take your hands
put them up over your head like that.
You can interlock your fingers if you want.
- Good, tall posture.
Ears over the shoulders.
If you've got neck pain, you may not-
- Be able to get back there.
- Right, so you're gonna get back
best you can.
Push gentle pressure straight down.
If that hurts, it's positive.
And that means maybe this'll help,
but you got to come from the other direction underneath
behind the ear - Yeah, there's little bones
right here, these two bones that stick out there.
You want to put your palms,
the meaty part of the palm,
that bone should hit right there.
Yep, and that gives you some good leverage.
And cup over the ears,
fingers are point straight up and you just pull straight up.
- And if that, your neck feels better as a result,
or if you're having radicular or arm pain,
if that feels better,
which you may not be able to do this very well
with your arm if it's really sore
because of the pinched nerve,
then you're not gonna be able to do this.
- You could ask someone to do it to you.
Now with that, you want to make sure
that we know if things are getting better.
If you're getting pain down your arm,
when you're doing traction, what we want to see is
that the pain that's furthest away from you
starts to improve first.
So like, if you had pain all the way into the hand,
we'd like to see the hand pain get better first.
Then maybe the forearm pain gets better.
Then maybe the upper arm gets better.
And then hopefully, it goes away.
So that's what we're looking for.
Ideally, all the pain just jumps out of there
and you don't feel any,
but if it makes your arm pain worse,
you're gonna stop immediately.
That's just a bad sign.
So you determine that it's gonna help.
You saw your therapist, a therapist,
usually, I'm gonna leave it up to the therapist,
but most times I start people
with 10 pounds of traction, Brad.
And 10 pounds, you gotta have at least the weight
of the head or you're not even really
getting any traction.
So start with 10 pounds.
Do it the first day.
You can maybe go for a couple minutes.
See how you tolerate it.
Maybe three to five minutes if you want.
See how you tolerate it.
If it's worse, stop.
Just one time to the first day.
Then if it was okay, it felt good,
the next day you could do it
up to three times that day.
- Sure, other precaution,
if for any reason you feel lightheaded or nauseous
while it's going on,
you need to stop right away
and you know, then you're gonna just discontinue it.
So it's not for you.
Definitely need to see a therapist
or a doctor with those symptoms.
- Now they had recommended, Brad,
you could go up to 15 to 20 minutes with this.
- Oh yeah.
I've done that.
- Have you done that long?
It seems like a long time.
- I've always done it on the third,
not until the third visit.
- Right.
- The first visit, just two or three minutes.
Wait till the next day, everything feels good.
Everything's better.
Then I'll go to five to 10 minutes.
Usually around five, feels good while you're doing it.
They go home the next day, it feels good.
There's no problem.
Then I'll jump into the longer time.
But usually I've never gone more than 20.
- Sure, and it's funny,
I saw one of these on an episode
of Andy Griffith where Barney was in it.
And they thought Barney was hanging himself. (laughs)
They were worried.
They were trying to save him.
- Well, they didn't have YouTube back then.
- Back then, right.
So anyway, this video is a part of a series of videos
on treatment of neck pain.
So you can go to BobandBrad.com,
go to the program section
and look for the neck pain videos.
And you'll have 20 to 30 videos there.
Pick out the ones that apply towards you.
And once you find that, you can click on it,
and you can play it,
and also what is available, Brad?
- Along with that, you can actually get a PDF printout
with a written out preview
or review of the video,
which makes it really nice.
You can write notes on it if you'd like to
so that it makes sense to you.
And you can remember what we talked about
and there's absolutely no charge at all.
We don't even ask for your email.
- That's our gift to gift from us to you.
The thing is,
if it wasn't clear how we were going over things today,
it's all in the PDF.
- Sure.
- So check it out.
And happy hanging. (laughs)
- Oh, Bob. Why?
(upbeat music)