♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Together, we are the most famous physical therapists
and, probably, the most ugly physical therapists
on the internet.
- Oh, Bob.
In our opinion, of course, in his opinion.
- Alright, today, we're going to talk about
the best sleeping position for back pains,
sciatica, leg pain.
We've already done one on, basically,
kind of, the waist up, more the neck.
- And the upper trunk.
- Upper trunk and the arm.
So I'll link to that at the end.
If you can wait all the way to the end,
I'll show the link to that.
- Sure.
- See how I did that, Brad?
- Yeah, you're working on it, Bob.
- Okay, today, these are a lot of great tips.
So you want to pay attention,
and we've got a lot of them.
So let's start off with, first off,
you want to make sure your back is lined up well
when you're sleeping.
You want to make sure you're not
in a rounded-out position like this.
So you want to make sure your mattress isn't saggy.
- Right, if you've got a big hole in it,
it's a really soft mattress and it's used,
a number of years old, you know,
you probably know if you have it.
- And so, if you want to see if it's
gonna feel a lot better to get a firmer mattress
or a new mattress, you might take your mattress
and put it on the floor, because that would
kind of give it a solid.
- Right.
- Or you can do what my wife and I did when we first
were married and we didn't have money,
is we took a piece of plywood and we put it
between the box spring and the mattress
and that took the sag out of it.
- But you did put the mattress back on.
- We did put the mattress back on.
And we didn't break the bar.
But that worked out really good actually.
- It's a family show, Bob.
- All right, the next thing you may want to try,
is when you're sleeping on your back
one thing that some people have recommended
and Mulligan was one of them again,
is to actually take a sheet
cause you want to keep again
the back in a neutral position,
you don't want to round out like this
so for some people especially if
they're having back pain,
are in the throes of back pain
they might want to try this.
You take a long sheet and you roll it up like this,
you start in the front like this,
I don't want to get my microphone.
And then you go around like this
and it actually doubled up in the
back a little bit.
You see that Brad?
- The whole idea is you wanna make some cushion here
to take up that space to support that low
back so it doesn't go into that hole, if you will.
- Right, it keeps the arch.
And so you can pin this in place,
or tape it in place.
So let me show you here when I'm laying
on my back, it provides my back some support.
But beyond that even is when I lay on my side.
Especially if you have wide shoulders and wide hips
the back is gonna sag down like this.
- You're gonna get that sag,
there's gonna be that hollow spot there.
- Right, if this isn't in place
this sheet keeps your back aligned nice and straight
while you're in this position.
- Now, the thing about sheets is they're
not very soft, if you actually, they make them
and they work I think a lot better than a sheet,
but you can--
- You can start with this, if it works out well,
then our camera woman--
- Come out, Lonnie.
- Lonnie, come on down to the Price is Right.
So this is tied in place.
- This is actually, can you lift that arm up?
This is a McKenzie Lumbar Sleep Roll.
- Oh, Sleep Roll.
- It's a Sleep Roll, exactly.
And we got it wrapped around
you tie it in the front like this.
It does not need to be in the front
like the sheet does, just on
the sides and the back.
Why don't you lay down once Lonnie?
And Lonnie has never tried one of these before
and she laid down with it just a little
bit ago and she immediately said...
What did you say?
- Good!
- Yeah, good.
- So then you can roll on your side, Lonnie.
And the same thing again,
keeps your back nice and straight
when she's on her side.
- Right, it fills in that hollow spot
to support that lumbar spine.
- You can actually do that even if
you sleep on your side all the time,
you could actually just put a small pillow there.
I mean that would do the job.
- You'll know, cause if it's the
right size it's gonna feel good.
- Thanks Lonnie.
She likes it so much, she's gonna
wear it all day she said.
She'll be the talk of the town.
All right, the other thing that
works out quite well especially for
people who are having kinda severe
back pain is to sleep on your back
and to put a pillow underneath your legs
or a wedge.
So let's do...
Should we do the pillow first?
So I'm sleeping on my back,
I would have a pillow here too.
- We're gonna give you the deluxe.
- You might need it under my legs, though.
Oh there we go, yeah.
- I knew you'd like that.
- So a pillow underneath the legs,
it takes off some of the...
The hip flexors aren't pulling on the back now
like they were, and so you're not
getting as much stress on your back.
It would be better probably with two.
- Depends on how thick your pillow is,
how big your body is.
Bob's a tall guy, he probably needs two.
- Yeah, I need two.
And that actually does feel really good Brad.
Really does take some of the stress off the back.
But let's show the deluxe position here, Brad.
- And this is something I use a lot
with patients, and most of them are very happy.
- I was really shocked about this.
How good this feels.
It's like you said, even if you support the legs like this,
this does not feel nearly as good
as if he shoves that...
Right up against the buttocks.
- It touches the hamstrings and there's
something about that that helps relax
and support the pelvis.
- This is very comfortable, back pain
or no back pain, and this is gonna
stop you from sleeping on your side too.
- I have one of these at home and when
I have a back problem, If I'm out working
in the yard or doing some stuff
that I shouldn't be doing, I got a backache,
I use this, I put a cold pack under my bed
under my back, and then I fall asleep.
I wake up later and take the cold pack out
and sometimes I'll take this out and sometimes I won't.
- And if you want to try to simulate that
at home without one of the wedges you
could lay on the floor, put your feet
up on the couch, it wouldn't be
quite the same but it would still
take some of the stress of the back
and you could put your hot or cold pack
you could put a hot pack I guess on that too.
- Sure, some people prefer that.
- Cold packs I think are quite often better.
When you're sleeping on your side Brad,
do you need that yet or?
- Well I was just gonna say if you want
it there it's called a leg wedge and just Google
leg wedge and you'll see many pictures of them
and you can buy them.
- We actually did a video on just that alone.
- We did.
- All right when you're sleeping on your side
what you may want to do is actually
use a pillow between the legs.
This is what we call the stacked position,
so my legs are stacked on top of each other
and the pillow again keeps the spine
aligned and stops the spine from rotating
so it works really well with that.
If you're a person that likes to sleep
with a leg a little bit forward,
then you may want to actually use two
pillows and get it up a little bit higher like that.
- Then you got no pillow for your head, Bob.
- I know, that's a problem.
- You gotta go buy some more pillows.
- Yeah you're gonna need lots of pillows.
- The other thing about this is it takes
stress of the hip.
- Yes it does, yeah.
- If you've got hip bursitis or
hip arthritis this can be--
- Very good point, Brad.
And what's nice about this you know
'cause on the upper extremities we talked about
giving the arms support like this
you actually can flip around like this, Brad.
I mean it's not that hard to do.
You could switch positions.
- And this way, if my wife is mad at me
and she's not sleeping in bed with me,
then I got something to hold on to.
- Aww, isn't that sweet.
I think there's a lot of nights like that.
We did all that.
Oh, the one thing I was gonna mention
and I don't know why this is but Brad
confirmed this too there is a lot of people
that when they're having the throes of back pain
and they're really having a lot of back pain
they sleep in a recliner.
I've had people that...
And the thing that we want to remind you
if you're sleeping in a recliner, I don't want
you sleeping kind of in a humped position like this.
Put a throw pillow or something behind your back
so you're nice and straight and then
back like this in the recliner.
- Back it up as far as you can go,
have that lumbar support there
I just don't feel, I don't feel confident
in saying sleep in a recliner,
but there are people they are going
to sleep in the recliner.
- And that's what I mean.
There must be some merit to it
because I've had people, I mean a lot of people
and they probably discover it because they
aren't able to sleep so they get up
and watch TV, and then they find out
they can sleep in the recliner.
And I've had people even years later
that had to continue sleeping
in a recliner because it brings on
pain if they don't.
So there's not much you can do
if that's the issue.
- I'm not gonna advocate it, though,
unless that's what works I guess.
- All right, the final thing is we talked about
is it okay for you to sleep on your stomach
A lot of people think you know you can't sleep
on your stomach it puts your back in too much
of a swayback, that's usually not the case.
Quite often if you've been sleeping on your stomach
and you don't have back pain,
I'd go ahead and keep doing it.
Wouldn't you, Brad?
- We're always concerned about the neck
cause your head is twisted one way or another
so we oftentimes say avoid sleeping
on your stomach because of the neck
not so much the back unless you got
a big saggy bed and you're sleeping
in kind of a hole in reverse maybe
that would be undesirable but--
- You might try sleeping with a pillow
underneath your stomach.
Again if you're having a lot of back pain
sometimes it's weird the positions that help you.
- Sleeping on the floor,
I've had people with back pain
sleep on the floor cause it's a firm surface
gets that spine in line.
I had this one woman, she slept on the floor
for over a month and she felt better sleeping
on the floor than in her bed.
- Did she use a foam mattress, or anything?
- No, it was carpeted.
- It was carpeted.
Mulligan recommended that too.
To go ahead and sleep on the floor.
- McKenzie will work with that sometimes too.
- All right, lots of tips lots of things
you can think about, and please comment
below cause we always like to hear from you.
Right Brad?
- Well yeah but there's one other thing
that we're going to work on, and we're
still having is that broken heart.
Can you get that to come up there?
- Here's the broken heart and now
we're gonna fix it with our mind, telepathically.
- You're gonna make it go together aren't ya.
It's all digital.