- All right, Bob, we're gonna talk about wrist pain.
Now, we're gonna talk about various reasons of wrist pain.
For example, if you fell on your wrist,
sprained it, possibly broke it.
Or if you have chronic pain that's been bothering you
for weeks or months or even longer-
- Like overuse?
- Right, from maybe the job you work at, maybe a sport,
like hockey - Right.
- That you're working that wrist all the time.
We're gonna show you answers on how to get this wrist
better quickly.
Hold on 9.3 seconds and we will be right back.
- Yeah, y'all.
- Yeah. (laughs)
And we're gonna sing the song together.
Bob. - Bob and Brad.
- Forget it.
No, let's do that.
♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapist on the internet ♪
Okay, here we go.
Bob, we're gonna take it from the first...
Oh, let's back up a second.
There are actually two people that are-
- Having this trouble.
We're doing it for our friend, Chris the pharmacist,
his son Zach.
- And?
- And Sabrina. - Sabrina.
- Yeah, and Sabrina...
So Danny, he's doing the camera right now.
- Danny, he's cool- - With his significant-
- With us. - Other.
Yep. So we're gonna give this for those people as well.
But there's a lot of people with wrist pain.
- Right.
- This is gonna help.
The first thing is if you happen to have wrist pain
as a result of falling on that wrist and you have problems
with it, it's swollen and it's painful to move.
You've gotta go see a doctor.
- Yep.
- You gotta get x-rays.
- X-ray vision.
- Yep. Because if you do have a broken bone or a separation,
it's gonna be a little bit different treatment,
more specialized.
- Right.
- You may need to see the doctor or a therapist
but if it's just sore,
you feel very comfortable it's not broke,
what you really need to do is get yourself a cold pack.
Put a cold pack on that wrist, 15 to 20 minutes,
two to three times a day.
The next thing you can do, if it hurts with movement,
is just go buy a generic wrist-
- Brace.
- Brace or splint.
Doesn't have to be a fancy one.
Anything that protects it so that-
- NorthShore.
- Yep, and you're gonna do that for a few days
to get the swelling down and get it moving again.
Okay. If you have a stiff...
Ah, let's break.
Okay. Number two, we've got the painful wrist
from either a fall that's recovering
or maybe it's arthritis
or maybe it's just painful
and you really don't understand why,
hands out like this.
We're just gonna do some simple range
of motion down with the wrists and up
or extending now and flexing and do that 10 times.
But while you do this,
note, if one hand is tighter than the other.
So you see...
Bob, can you give an example of this wrist being...
(Bob and Brad laughing)
So this one's all the way down.
You can see that.
And look at this one.
It only goes about half the range of motion.
We've got a tight wrist here.
So keep that in mind.
And, you know, maybe it'll loosen up with repetition,
otherwise I'm gonna show you a quick stretch on that.
Then next, go side to side like this.
That's called ulnar and radial deviation.
Again, see if one goes normal
another one doesn't go so much.
If you see one asymmetry between the wrist,
take a note of that.
If you do see, like Bob had his left wrist was tight,
it didn't go down, take the other hand,
grab over the palm, not over the fingers.
Because we wanna isolate the wrist
and gently stretch it down
and back up.
When you do these stretches, it's not gonna be aggressive.
It's not gonna stretch, stretch, stretch
where it really hurts.
Stretch, gentle pain, back off, repetition each time.
Hopefully, you'll gain some range.
You may have to do this for a few days
if it's a very chronic and long-term tightness,
or you gotta break up a little scar tissue, perhaps.
You can do the same like this going up,
repetition 10 times.
Do two or three times a day.
And the same with the radial deviation.
I just grab here and work it.
Whichever way is tight.
Okay, go ahead.
And if it is from arthritis
just range of motion itself and the stretching is
gonna bring that pain.
- Will help.
- Yep. - Okay.
- All right. Next.
(air whooshes)
This next option is a little more aggressive.
You can try it.
If it works and it feels good for you, do it.
If not, don't.
This is decompression.
- It's Brad's vengeance.
- Yeah, I've been doing this for years and I thought
why should you show people at home?
It really works well
and we've had good responses by people who are doing it.
So let's say this is a wrist I wanna loosen up.
You can do it to both of them.
This has to be loose.
Sometimes if you're starting,
you put a pillow here to rest your arm
I'm able to relax my hand without that.
Take the other hand, grab above the wrist
and what I'm going to do
and if you look right here very closely,
you'll see I'm decompressing
and actually separating the joint a little bit.
It's not like you're pulling it apart an inch or anything.
It's just, you know,
16th of an inch or whatever, decompression.
If it feels good, you do it, you know, up to five times.
Now, the next step to advance this is pull
and watch what happens to my wrist at this point.
I'm gonna pull and I'm going to rotate.
My palm stays still, but I rotate that
and boy that is a nice, you know, if it-
- Very clever.
- Yeah, if it feels good, you do it.
If you do it and you get sharp pain, do not do it.
- Stop. - Particularly after it fall.
- Right.
- It's not ready for it yet. - Absolutely. Right.
- Okay, so that only takes a little bit of time actually.
So we're going to the next number.
(air whooshes)
Number four, we are talking.
And I think in regards to Zach and Sabrina,
they really need to look at this one carefully.
- Focus on number four.
- Yep.
So we're gonna start out 90 degree bend in the elbows.
Put 'em like this, palms, well put thumbs up to start with.
And what we're going to do,
assess range of motion,
and pronation and supination.
And what that means is pronation means palms down,
supination, palms up.
Make sure that your arms are
by your ribs and keep 'em glued there
because we don't want to have this going on.
This doesn't count.
This is glued in tight.
Palm down, palm up.
And then compare right to left.
Now, if you do this palm down, they look even.
And you go palm up.
This is my uninjured one or my painful wrist.
And I only go this far or it's not even with this hand.
We've got a problem here.
- That's the culprit.
- Yep, that's what we have to address
and get that stretched out, so both of them are equal.
It is pretty normal
that palms go flat like this on most people.
- Right.
- And they go down like this on most people.
- Yep.
- If they're both the same and they're not flat,
well you could stretch both of them.
But if one, particularly the sore one is limited one way
or the other compared to the good arm,
stretch, stretch, stretch.
We're gonna show you right now.
- Alright.
(air whooshes)
- Okay. The stretch on this is relatively simple.
However, it does work quite a bit better
if you have a second person help you.
So if my palm does not go up like this,
and this is usually the culprit, versus not going down-
- You can work on it, right?
- We're gonna stretch it like this.
If you're by yourself, you take this hand
and reach around, above the wrist joint,
grab the forearm and twist.
So you're gonna really get a good grip
with the tips of your fingers right there.
And twist and relax.
Hold and relax.
Or you can hold it for a longer period of time.
Now, the key relaxing this arm as much as possible.
- Right.
- If you have someone to help you,
Bob's gonna show you how that would happen.
- I'd grab like this.
- And-
- Gentle stretch.
- Yep.
If it creates sharp pain, you're going too aggressive.
Make sure you don't go to that.
Go up to the point of pain.
- Use both hands.
- And then come back.
So, yeah, he's got both hands on there.
It's easier to relax when there's more support like this.
Bob-
- Say uncle.
- Yeah, Bob is strung like bull in the Popeye wrist he has.
- Right.
- So he's not using all his force and that's okay.
So about 10 repetitions.
This is something that should be addressed many times a day
- Right.
- About every two hours.
- Yep.
- Obviously,
you're probably not gonna have someone to assist you,
so you're gonna be doing the independent technique.
All right.
- Awesome.
- Now, we do have one more technique for taping.
Kinesio taping.
Zach, I think you should try this.
I think it would be very helpful for you particularly
'cause you're in the midst of hockey season.
- I agree.
- And you need to max out your potential.
Sabrina, you can do this too if you want.
(Bob and Brad laughing)
I don't think it'll be needed.
(air whooshes)
Okay, so if you wanna have treatment on your forearm
and wrist all the time, you can use Kinesio tape.
It's used all the time, particularly with athletes.
You always see athletes taped
with Kinesio tape for their injury.
So Zach, this is what I want you to do.
Obviously, get yourselves some Kinesio tape.
We're going off of John Gibbons.
He wrote this book.
He is an expert on Kinesio taping-
- Yup.
- Particularly athletes.
- He's the guy.
- And he doesn't do just athlete,
he does world class athletes. - Right.
- He knows what he's doing.
So that's where I'm getting this information from.
He likes RockTape.
You don't have to use RockTape.
He likes it, so I know it's good.
You can get whatever you can get your hands on.
We found other ones work well too.
So, you're gonna need one piece of tape
about 11 inches long.
When you cut it,
make sure you cut the ends rounded like this.
It makes it last longer.
Clean your skin very good.
If you want to get serious about it
because we want this tape to last on there
for up to five to seven days.
- Sure.
- If you shave the hair off your arms,
it's gonna stick better, it's gonna last longer.
You don't have to do that.
Try it without it first.
If it comes off in a day or two, shave.
It's gonna last better and, you know,
you'll be really excited about that.
- Gotcha.
(Bob and Brad laughing)
- Okay, so the trick to doing this,
it's not easy to do the first time.
So you gotta plan on probably doing it once
or twice to get started.
- Probably screwing up.
- Don't spend any time trying to peel the non-sticky side
off like that, it's a waste of time.
- Right.
- It's made to just tear like that.
Kinesio tape stretches in one direction only.
That's the way we want to do it.
So tear it off like this.
Take that, throw it away.
Okay? Now, we're gonna take the part that's sticky.
Start here.
This is a position specifically you have to do.
Your wrist has to be flexed, elbow straight.
Okay? And so we're looking just like this.
Okay, I thought I missed one thing
but I think I'm doing it just perfectly fine.
I wanna make sure I do it just like John talks about it.
We're gonna start here on the ring and pinky side.
Just above those knuckles. Go here-
- Outside of the hand.
- Yep, just like that.
Now, what we're gonna do at this point is peel it off
and do it like I'm doing it because what will happen
if the sticky side touches a sticky side?
You get a mess.
- That's true. Yeah.
- You know what I'm talking about. (chuckles)
Now, sometimes with Kinesio tape,
you actually want to stretch and stick it.
In your case, you do not want to stretch.
You put your hand down like this,
a little stretch but not much.
Try and keep the wrinkles out and go all the way up, okay?
Now, if this happens to you and you don't get up
to the elbow, you need to cut yourself a longer strip.
I'm not gonna do that now
because I'm just letting you know this is not quite...
You could try it like here, but I would take it off
and cut one a little bit longer.
Now, the end, you should not stretch at all.
Slight stretch here.
No stretch here.
We're gonna wipe it down.
Okay? There's a way to heat set this.
I'll show you that in a minute.
But then you're gonna take a short piece.
Now, this piece we're gonna rip like this
and this we are going to stretch.
Okay? So I'm gonna be careful.
Take that off of there.
We're gonna cross near the end of this,
which will be up here.
If it was done the way we really want it in theory,
tape down,
get that stuck down.
And now I'm gonna leave that on just like that.
Now, I'm going to stretch about 75%.
So you pull it all the way till it doesn't stretch anymore.
Back off a little bit and then drop down.
- That'll be up there, right?
- Yep, it would be near the end of the tape,
- Right.
- Which, you know, we want that closer to the elbow
and then we drop that down.
Now, one thing you may wanna do,
and this is my idea
and I'm sure John would be fine with it.
This may have a tendency to come off.
- Or crawl up.
- Yeah, so what you're gonna do is just take another piece,
put it here,
stretch it,
bring it around
and bring it there.
And then you take one of the...
- Here. You use that.
- Yeah, I'm looking for the long one.
Where did the long one go?
That's all right.
- Right here.
- Yeah, there we go.
See you take what you're throwing away and you take one side
of it and it actually goes really nice and smooth.
If you put the shiny side
on it sticks a little bit to the not so shiny side.
And then you rub on it for about 30 seconds, kind of fast.
That heats up the tape.
It helps secure. - Secure.
- Yep. Get that adhesion down to the skin.
You have to do this, eh...
I'm not gonna do it for 30 seconds.
- Yeah. - But you got the idea.
The next thing is, is monitor this.
If it gets red, itchy, anything like that,
you take it off, you cannot do it.
- Right.
- Your body is reacting to the tape, the adhesive
and you just cannot do it.
You're allergic.
Doesn't happen to very many people.
- With my daughter.
- Yeah, well that one person.
In general, a lot of people.
- Right.
- Yeah, you just...
Yeah, we don't have any stats.
I knew I... (Brad laughing)
- It happened to me too.
- Did it?
Well, okay, 50-50.
(Bob and Brad chuckles)
Sabrina did too.
Yeah. Okay.
- Okay. - Well, chances are
you won't be able to use it
because you'll react. (Bob laughing)
No, you see- - There you go.
- You see people all the time,
but if you do react, you're not a candidate
and then you leave that on as long as it stays on.
I've had it on for five to seven days on my leg once
and I was swimming and taking a shower and it stays on.
Yeah, so Zach, you know- - That's great.
- You'll get bored out of your skull losing this battle.
But that is gonna help you.
Make sure you do this taping technique.
It's going to be a wonderful-
- Go to a drugstore.
- Yeah, go to the drugstore.
His dad is a drug...
(Bob and Brad laughing)
He can take care of it. - Right.
- Yeah, goodbye.
(lively music)