♪ 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're the most famous physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Today we're gonna go over five simple tricks, Brad,
for hand pain or finger pain.
These work out well for arthritis
or if you have a jammed finger
or if you just have hand pain overall that's unexplained.
These are good for that.
- Well, I actually smashed my finger
while I was doing a project
with a 12-pound sledgehammer a few weeks ago.
- Self-inflicted.
- Yeah, it was, yeah.
It sort of applies to this.
- So we'll try it on yours today, Brad,
and we'll see if we have any luck with it.
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Oh, he's gonna help us out, Sam, huh?
- Nope, he can't.
- He can't, his hand's backwards.
(mumbles)
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- Yeah, these are top-end.
- And if you're having trouble with comfort,
as far as back pain or neck pain
or shoulder and hip pain, that's your baby.
All right, let's talk about this first, Brad.
The first thing you wanna do is you wanna make sure
that you're getting full range of motion in all the joints.
Especially a painful joint after a while,
it tends to tighten up and the more a joint tightens up,
the more painful it becomes.
So it's kind of a bad cycle.
You want to regain the motion
and a lot of times, the pain levels go down.
- Sure.
- So what I'm gonna do
is we're gonna show you the motions to do
and if you find out a particular joint
that bothers you while you're doing the motions,
we've got some tricks for those
that we're gonna show you in the next three steps.
- Sure.
- So try these, note which ones hurt,
and then we're gonna try these little tricks on those
after we do those.
So let's start off with number one.
Basically finger taps.
So you're taking the thumb
and you're gonna tap it to each finger.
So like this.
And you're gonna open wide open after you do it.
- We're making circles, and then open up wide.
- Good, and you can go reverse it.
Come right back down the line.
Just a good warmup one, good stretch.
Okay.
Next one Brad, we're gonna go ahead
and this one's just working kind of the base of the thumb.
And this is a problematic area, by the way,
a lot of times in arthritis.
You're gonna take the thumb
and you're gonna touch over to the base of the fifth.
Can you get there?
- Nope, I cannot get that far, Bob.
- [Bob] Yep, this is a stretch Brad should be doing.
- [Brad] Oh yeah!
- Can you go to the base of this second finger right there?
- [Brad] Oh yes, yes.
I can even do the Spock thing.
- There we go, yep.
Can throw that one in there, that's the bonus one.
As you can see, right to here,
Brad's just demonstrating on film it can be tight on people,
and maybe it's something you need to work on.
- [Brad] Getting a little stretch.
- Yep.
Next one, we're gonna go ahead and do table top.
- Oh, yeah. - All right?
You're having a little trouble with that one too, Brad.
And then you can actually go from this one
up to the claw if you wanted to.
You can throw two in a row right here.
- Well, you know Bob,
I'm sure I have some early stage arthritis
because my hands get real stiff in the morning,
particularly my right hand.
So I do these in the morning to get warmed up.
- Something anyway.
You do some range in motion?
- Right, yeah.
I don't do the table, well, we'll go on.
'Cause these are good, I just have some options.
Therapists make up their own stuff.
- Sure.
And then you're gonna want to do full flexion.
This is where you're flexing, fully flexing all the joints.
Getting 'em all goin'.
Okay, so let's say in the instance you found
one of your fingers bothers you.
Let's say it's this joint here.
I'm gonna show it on the spine here first,
on Sam the skeleton.
So let's say we're looking at this joint right here.
You have a bone above it, above it, and below it.
And that forms the joint right there.
So the technique you're gonna try, it's a little tricky.
You're gonna push one of the bones this way
and you're gonna push one of the bones this way.
- [Brad] This is a little advanced
for the lay person I think, but we can give it a try.
- [Bob] I think they can do it.
I think they can do it. - Okay, let's try.
- Let's say it's my joint right here.
I shouldn't use the middle finger should I.
- [Brad] You can use that would be the third digit.
- Alright, well, fourth actually in our lingo.
So I'm pushing with my thumb, I'm pushing the bone this way,
and with my finger I'm pushing it this way.
So I'm going opposite directions.
I'm pushing 'em, and as I push 'em,
I've been bending the finger.
Now, if that hurts or hurts worse, then you do the opposite.
You're gonna put your finger on top right here
and below here, and now I'm gonna push this way,
and I'm gonna go that way, and go, oh that feels better!
So which finger are you having trouble with, Brad?
- Well you can see the one that's got these scars.
- Oh yeah! - It's still healing.
- So do you have trouble bending that one or not?
- It's getting much better, but I have--
- So you don't have pain when you're doing it?
- Well, last week this would have been a problem.
- [Bob] Did you try this though?
- No I didn't.
I worked similar to the claw,
and I used my other hand just--
- To give it a little stretch there.
- Yeah, because it really wasn't in the joint so much.
It kinda smushed the bone
and I think the tendon and the ligament--
- Yeah, you're in the soft tissue there.
- Was involved so it wasn't so much the joint itself,
it was the soft tissue between.
I had to get them stretched out
'cause it was starting to tighten.
- Gotcha.
So anyway, you can have somebody help you with this.
Somebody could actually push the bones for ya.
But again, it works out.
I've done this before on jammed fingers for me.
I pushed one this way and one this way, it didn't work.
I reversed it and try it
and one of them feels good generally always for me.
- If it doesn't, if it hurts both ways,
just stop doing it. - You don't do it, yeah.
The next thing you could try is a simple one.
You could try with a little bit of traction.
Just doing a little traction,
and even bend it while you're doing a little traction.
- Sure!
- How's that feel on you, Brad?
- Yeah, I like the traction one.
Actually, and if you're relaxed,
I can actually feel my first MTP separate a little bit.
It's completely pain-free.
It actually feels kinda good.
- And then the last thing you could try is actually,
you could what we call block the joint.
So let's say I'm working on this joint right here.
I could put my thumb right below it
and I can block the movement from there,
so I'm working just right on that joint per se
and see if you can get that loose.
Now let's say I wanna work on this joint below.
I'm gonna go ahead and just go right,
I'm blocking right below.
I'm squeezing on both sides.
I'm holding the bone below on both sides.
- I've done this with a lot of patients after hand surgery
or an injury, and then I'll have them do it at home.
I'll have them work individual joint all the way down
to the big knuckle.
- If these are all still hurting quite a bit
when you do these,
I would recommend you maybe try some modalities.
I'm gonna show you one
that you'd have to purchase, actually,
and then we're gonna show you one you can do at home
without having to purchase anything.
We like the Thermotex.
This is infrared heat.
The reason we like it is because normal heat
only penetrates a few millimeters--
- Millimeters, yeah.
- I think we looked at it.
- No, I looked for it before, Bob.
Basically, skin deep, it's not gonna get into the joint deep
where infrared is gonna do a nice job with that.
- Infrared will actually penetrate 2.36 inches,
and if you make it into a muff here basically,
it's actually gonna go 4.72 inches which in other words,
it's gonna go all the way through the finger joints.
In addition to using this
for anything that (mumbles) you might have,
back pain or knee pain or hip pain,
Brad and I use it nightly on our backs.
It serves really well that you can just sit and watch TV
and stick your hands in there
and kinda give yourself a treatment
to heat that whole joint up.
And then, after that, or even while it's in there,
you can try to do some motion, or immediately after,
try to go ahead and get some motion in.
So the next thing is
if you don't want to spend the money right now,
you can try contrast baths.
So contrast baths meaning you're gonna use it for...
You could have two tubs, basically.
You could have two thinks and two tubs.
You're gonna fill one with basically water
that is about as warm as you can tolerate,
generally from like 100 to 110 degrees,
you can determine what is your tolerance.
- It shouldn't be so uncomfortable
it makes you want to pull out.
- It's all as tolerated without pain.
And then you have another tub with cold water
and that should be as cold as you can tolerate without pain.
So 59 to 70 degrees, somewhere in there.
So when you're heating up a joint,
you're gonna get increased oxygen and circulation
and nutrients going into the joint,
and then when it goes to the cold,
it's gonna close the blood vessels,
remove fluid and toxins in the waste and all that,
so it's kind of exercising the blood vessels.
- Right, those things expand, things can contract.
You got movement of the blood flow and lymph, whatnot.
It's what's we need for--
- And what's nice, you can do your exercises.
So you have the two tubs of water.
You put your hand in the warm water first
or your hands in the warm water.
I've seen anywhere from up to five minutes,
but generally I recommend three to four minutes.
Three to four minutes and work your hands
and then go into the cold for just one minute.
- It's not the same.
- It's not the same ratio.
Back three to four, back to one.
Do this for 20 to 30 minutes.
Do your exercises in the water.
It works out as a great...
What was that beeping noise?
- Don't worry about the beeping, Bob.
- It just works as a great exercise
to try to help loosen up the joint,
get more blood flow to it.
Arthritic people really like the feel of it generally.
- Bob, before we go any farther,
I know, almost 100% certain we're gonna have people ask,
Bob, what's going on with your finger?
- Oh, I have Dupuytren's contracture.
- Yeah, we have a lot of comments
of people asking about that.
So we did a video on that particular diagnosis.
So if you happen to have that, you can look at our video.
- You know what's hilarious about this?
I swear to God, I had this for 10 years
and my wife did not know.
(Brad laughs)
She did not know. - Wow!
- Until I pointed it out to her.
- That's amazing, Bob.
- That is amazing to me.
- She's not attentive to your hands.
- Apparently not.
(Brad laughs)
But it doesn't bother me. - No!
- I can golf and all that.
The reason I don't get it corrected
'cause if you do an injection, it'll work.
There's an injection, you can do surgery,
but it could come right back. - Sure.
- So I'm like, ah!
- It's not getting in the way.
His wife doesn't notice it, what's the--
- My wife doesn't notice it,
people around me didn't notice it for years.
- People on YouTube know though.
- People on YouTube care about me.
- They're very astute out there, I'm telling you.
We've got high-level people watching.
- That's right.
We got a lot of intelligence out there.
- That's right.
- Thanks for watching. - Thank you.