♪ 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 therapist on the internet.
♪ In our opinion of course ♪
Let's talk about sciatica, Brad.
- Okay, Bob.
- Let's get some relief for people out there.
- Right. When you got sciatica, come pain from the back,
running down that leg,
and you wanna put the kibosh on it
and at least get some relief,
so that you can get through that pain.
So we're not gonna talk about necessarily a treatment plan,
but - Right.
- a three different options that you can oftentimes,
and with our experience-
- Throughout the day.
- Yeah.
- Give yourself some relief. - You should be able to think
something that works for you. - Right.
A position. - Right. Exactly.
So shall we bring Sam
in on the discussion? - Yeah, let's go.
Sam, you wanna come on in?
- Oh, yes, I'd be happy
to meet Bob and Brad. (Bob chuckles)
Okay, here we go.
- You dislocated his jaw.
- Well, we don't worry about that.
(Bob laughing) Sam, he's gonna keep quiet.
(Bob chuckles) So, with sciatica,
we're talking almost always
the lower two vertebra, - Right, right.
L4, L5 or L5, S1. - Right.
And we find out that if you can position
the spine in a certain way,
by going one way or the other, forward or backwards subtly
- Right. - or even decompression
or that where you
- Where you pull apart, yeah. - pull the spine apart,
you can relieve the pressure on that nerve.
The pain will drop down significantly.
- Right.
- And that is a nice way to manage it throughout the day.
- Well, a lot of times,
if you can string a bunch of them together,
you'll find out suddenly, your pain is gone.
- Right.
That's true as well. - Right.
- Yeah, you just gotta work with it
and we're gonna show you three,
not three specific exercises,
but three different options.
We've got some subgroups in there.
But the four minutes on the title,
it might take three and a half.
Once you get good at that one,
it might go down to two. - Three and a half.
- The first time,
it might take four minutes - Sure.
- and 40 seconds, - Sure.
- but one way or another, and it's just a ballpark figure.
- All right. - So the first one,
shall we start with
- Sure. - lying down.
Oh, what about our giveaway?
- This is our giveaway.
I was gonna show this by using it.
- Oh, our Pete's Choice. - At some point,
when I was on my side.
- Oh, I see. - Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
It's still a nice cushion
for multiple uses. - Yeah.
They got multiple uses.
- Yeah, you can stand on it for balance.
- There we go. - Okay.
- So we're gonna start with supine,
what we call it. - Right. There you go.
So you can lie there
in bed or you could do this
on a couch, possibly, not too soft.
- Right. - The first thing
that we're gonna talk about is just lying on your back
and getting some pillows underneath your legs
'cause you lift- - Just one leg or both legs?
- There you go.
You might even want three,
depends on how thick your pillows are.
And that may be enough just to let that pain settle down.
- Yes. - It kind of depends.
You may wanna shift around a little bit.
If you go, I had this work with all the people,
if they feel this is not high enough,
and they're able
to get around, - Right.
- lie down next to a piece of furniture
and get your feet up.
- [Bob] Like he's talking about an ottoman or a footstool.
- Or even a chair if you can...
- [Bob] Right.
- A soft, cushy chair that's in your living room.
- Right. - Something of that nature.
I've had good success with this position.
- [Bob] Right, and you yourself
would often put a cold pack
- Right, right. - to go with this.
- Right. Exactly.
So that's always an option as well as put that...
A nice gel one. (chuckles)
You don't wanna - Right.
- get one made out of frozen peas
- Freezer. - or something of that nature.
And you'll just lie there as long as you feel comfortable.
You may be there for five, 10, even 15 minutes.
- [Bob] Right.
- And just let things settle down.
Then you can get up and move around carefully.
Is there anything else-
- Get the leg wedge, man.
- Oh, yes. - Behind ya.
They actually make a device - Yeah.
- that's for this purpose.
- Yeah.
- Now, we don't understand why,
but for some reason, it feels better when you have this
little slanted here. - Right.
It makes that contact against the hamstrings,
it just allows you to relax more.
- Yep. - You can buy these online.
They cost about $30, somewhere in there.
- [Bob] 25, 30.
- But if one of these other options work,
this will probably work even better.
- Right. - And it's up to you.
The other ones are just fine.
- [Bob] You don't have to have
so many pillows on your bed then.
- Exactly. Giving back to the kids.
All right. - All right.
Prone?
- Well, yes, prone.
- Okay.
Oh, geez. (chuckles)
- Be careful, Bob. - Yeah.
Yeah.
- Now, lying on your stomach with sciatica
and all by itself, can oftentimes
relieve the stress in the back
and get that leg pain to go away.
Now, sometimes, you may have to lie down
and just lay there for 30 seconds to a minute
before you get things to settle out.
And then if it doesn't,
there's a few little tricks that we're gonna show you,
you can do with here.
First of all, you can try, go back to the pillows,
- Right. - put a pillow
or two. - If it's too much
to lie there without a pillow,
try a pillow first.
- Yes. Yeah. - And put it
under your abdomen and see what happens.
- Yeah, if it feels better, you could try two.
I'm not gonna, Bob. - Sure.
- We can just talk through that.
- Once you progress away from the pillow,
you can even try getting up onto your, just up onto a fist.
- Oh, goddammit.
(Bob laughing) (structure rolling)
- You can try putting out a fist
underneath your chin like this.
And then, you can actually go to two fists
if that feels okay.
And then, the next progression
would be actually do the prone prop
where you actually get up on your elbow like this.
- And you experiment with each of these
and find which way, - Right.
- gets rid of the leg pain and makes things feel better.
You wanna show them the trick, the roadkill trick from our
(indistinct)
course? - Sure.
So let's say the pain is on my left side.
You can actually try bringing you the leg up.
And I'm taking my left foot and putting on my right knee.
And you'll find out this for some reason,
- Right there. - we understand why,
but this will actually reduce your pain quite often.
- Right, and if it does,
it'll happen relatively quickly
within 10 to 15 seconds. - And obviously,
if it's the other side, you'd go like...
- Yep. - The other side.
Like that. - Exactly.
If you wanna do just
a shift with your hips to the right or to the left,
- Right. - if it's on your left leg,
usually, you just slide your hips gently
- To the right. - to the right.
And you wait 10 to 15 seconds and...
The people will say,
"Oh, yeah, it feels like the pain is coming out of the leg
and moving up."
That's a really good thing.
And then you're gonna redo this every hour or so.
- So basically, you're turning your body into a banana.
- Right.
Yeah, if we - If we go over
that way. - take the camera,
look from the top. - Show it this way.
- Yeah. - Yep.
- Exactly.
All right, now, finally, this last thing
is we talked about the decompression
or the traction options. - Right. Yep, exactly.
- We're gonna show you the-
- There's all different
options for that. - Yep.
Show you the easiest and the cheapest way to do it. (sighs)
It may not, I would say this one-
- Oh, I forgot to mention this one.
- Oh my goodness gracious. - So sideline.
This is one where you put the painful leg on top
and you actually put a pillow or two
or a Pete's Choice Pad (Brad chuckles)
underneath. - Yeah.
- And quite often, this takes away the pain
and it actually will allow you to sleep sometimes.
- Right. Yeah, if you can't sleep.
So here, we got the Pete's Choice.
Here, you could use
the pillow as well. - Right.
- The good old Pete's Choice.
(Bob chuckles) See, I got one of these
for my brother and sister-in-law for Christmas
because they were working on a house project
and they're working
on the floor boards. - Oh.
- And they're on their knees all the time.
- They probably think kindly of you.
- Yeah, they're grateful.
- Yeah. (chuckles) - All right.
So let's carry on with the decompression
or the traction options. - Sure.
All right, and one is,
you could just use any two regular chairs.
And the reason is the seat pan that we're worried about.
- Right, we wanna have a good solid surface. You'll see.
So you'll get down here.
Gently, hands here. (palm slams)
Now, watch my knees (palm slams)
and everything is the right height.
Oh, oh, bad gap. Sorry. - Oh.
- That's okay.
There we go.
- You seeing this now? - Is that better?
So watch my knees.
I'm just going to relax my core,
so that we get the traction on the low back,
push up with my arms
and there, we have traction through the back.
Now, if you find that you're too short
and the chairs are too high,
you can put a pillow or something.
I'm gonna use...
(Brad chuckles)
This is a really good option. - Pete's Choice.
- Just anything that gets you up.
The idea is that you don't have...
You're not like this pushing up.
- Right.
- or you're not reaching down here.
You get the right height.
And that's, you have to kind of fiddle with.
Depending on your height. - Now, you possibly,
if you have a solid object, like a countertop,
or if you find a bench that is cemented in
(Brad chuckles) at the park,
- Yep. - you could
lean on the back like this - Right.
- and just lean forward like this.
- Yep. - This will help you.
- That's what
Stuart, - Stuart McGill.
- McGill talks about that one, yep.
Now, the other thing that works kind of neat is just,
if you have a pull-up bar, - Yeah.
- you have some hanging handles,
anything where you can suspend your body weight.
But Bob, wouldn't you agree,
the key thing with this is that you have to do it
with a very controlled motion. - Right.
- Like I'm gonna allow- - That's nice
to start with your feet
planted on the ground - Yeah.
- It can slowly lower you down.
And that's gonna allow you to relax.
- Yep. - And really allow
the midsection to relax. - Yep.
- And therefore, you can get some traction.
- [Brad] And if things are feeling good,
you can experiment a little bit
with trying to shift your hips right or left,
or do a slight rotation,
but the only reason you're gonna do that,
if it clearly makes it feel better
either takes the leg pain away or decreases it.
Because you might wanna hang and just go to the right
if the leg feels clearly better where at that,
or just straight.
And you'll be there,
your hands will probably tire out before anything,
30 seconds or so. (chair thuds)
- It's great that you can do every hour if you need to.
- Sure. Yep. - Just to give yourself
a lower relief. - Exactly.
- So the final.
- The option is the old inversion table.
I shouldn't say old, they've been around for awhile,
but they can work really good.
The bad part about it is I would not go out and buy one
if you've never used one.
You could, but if it doesn't work...
- It would behoove you to maybe go to a neighbor,
somebody who asks one (Brad chuckles)
and try one once.
- I had one
for a couple of years. - It's the Teeter, by the way,
a very good product. - Yeah.
The Teeter is built very well. (lock clicks)
But I've had a number of patients
who just swear by their inversion table.
It worked good for me with my-
- For a couple of years, right?
- Yeah, with my spine.
Things started to settle down. I didn't need it anymore.
And I sold it, used. But here we go.
And now, I typically never advise anybody
to go into a full inversion.
I think, about here is good enough,
but I know some people who...
- Go straight up and down. - Yeah.
- Or just really...
- And I could go there.
I figure, if you got enough here,
which I've always had enough
and the people I've worked with,
be conservative.
And if you haven't done one of these, do not...
I would never - Yeah.
Start off very slow. - go full inversion.
Don't don't hang too long.
- Yes, probably start
with just a minute or two. - Right.
If you've got eye problems, you're not gonna use it.
- High blood pressure. - If you got
blood pressure problems, you're not gonna use it.
You really should consult your doctor
and make sure that you don't have anything wrong with you.
If you're a completely healthy person,
you're probably fine. - And the interesting fact,
this is called the Teeter
'cause it looks like a teeter-totter, right?
- Yeah, teeter.
- But the guy who invented it, his name is Teeter.
- I really wonder
if he changed his name - I know.
- after he's invented this.
- I don't know.
- I don't think he invented the whole system,
but whatever. - Right, right, but...
- He's got a sense of humor, we think.
(Brad chuckles) - Wow,
I see. - He doesn't mind
if we say that.
- All right. (Brad laughing)
Remember, Brad and I can fix about anything.
- Except for...
- [Brad and Bob] A broken heart.
- And there you go. Be careful.
(bright music)