♪ Bob and Brad the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet. ♪
(clapping)
- I'm anxious to get started here, Brad.
Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Fixing sciatica: don't forget to nerve floss.
So in almost all cases nerve flossing
is kind of an adjunct therapy.
In other words, we want you to do the McKenzie program.
- Right. - So in other words,
go to bobandbrad.com, you can Google it,
and look up McKenzie program for sciatica treatment.
That's the main treatment we want you doing.
But quite often this nerve flossing
can help kinda take you over the finish line.
- Yep, it just makes it complete.
- And I've had some people where this worked
and the McKenzie program didn't really work as well,
believe it or not, unusual though.
- And it may be because there's some scar tissue
and the disc itself it not herniated or bulging.
- It was down to scar tissue, sure.
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- Say no more, Bob.
- So nerve flossing, you floss the nerves
just like you'd use floss to glide through your teeth.
So we're trying to help the nerves glide better.
And often what it does,
I don't think they really know what happens,
why it works well. - Well there's some theories.
- There's theories right, but it can desensitize them
so they're not as sensitive to pain, like any movement.
Because some nerves you can do very little
and it fires up your pain. - Sure.
- So we want to make it to the point
where your pain is going to reduce
and that it won't fire up so easily.
- Right, if you think of the nerve that we're flossing,
this is not exactly how it is,
but as an analogy if the nerve starts in your big toe,
runs through your foot, around the backside of the ankle,
all the way up into the back,
and connects up to the back of your head.
Think of that as a string, and we're going to try
to move that string together by specific movements
of our head and feet.
And it's not difficult, little bit at first,
but we'll work you through it.
- It's kind of interesting, we're actually putting
the nerve on slack up here,
while we tighten it down here.
- Right. - And then vice versa.
- So you think of that whole nerve as flossing,
going through, and it's not a lot of motion,
but a little bit and that's all that's needed.
It's flossing it as it goes through the vertebral,
the foramen, that's what I meant.
- Foramen, right. - Which is in your spine.
- The holes in your spine.
- That's where the scar tissue I think
is most likely to occur.
- Right, or on the disc itself.
- So you got to be careful with this
because it can make the pain better,
but it can make it worse.
- If you get too aggressive.
- Right, or some people it just makes it worse.
And so the first day you're going to do 10 repetitions.
We'll show you how you do it.
And we're gonna see how your body reacts.
If it increases your pain,
I want you to wait a week and I'm gonna show you
what to do then. - Okay.
- And we'll show you that after we've done this.
- We're gonna wait a week before we video it?
- No, no let's get started here.
So this is all one repetition here.
Let's say, you're gonna do it from the side, Brad.
Which leg are you using?
- I'll do the left.
- Okay I'll use the left too.
So you're going to extend the leg,
at the same time you're extending the neck.
And when you extend the leg,
you're bringing the toe towards you.
- Toes towards the nose, how I remember it.
- And then you're gonna go down,
and we'll put the head down,
and the toe goes down too.
So from what you can see here,
you need to have a high surface to do this on.
Now Brad is a little bit shorter so he can,
I'm actually still hitting my feet here, Brad, with this.
- I'm only eight inches shorter than you, Bob.
(laughing)
- So you may have to do this on a table top.
Also you gotta be able to have your leg go underneath it.
So there's a lot of specifics here.
- Make sure you have a good solid table to sit on.
- So let's go do one repetition again.
You go up, you extend the foot,
extend the knee, bringing the foot toward you,
extending the neck, then I'm going down.
I'm bringing the neck down; I'm bringing the foot down.
- Bob I just want to add in,
when you go down, this is usual for us,
but we're gonna ask you to round your back.
So you flex and round your back,
which is bad posture but for flossing is acceptable.
- Again, coming up and extend everything,
coming down flex everything.
Up and down is one repetition.
You're going to do it ten times.
- Go ahead. - Go ahead, Brad.
- I just wanted to say, particularly when you pull
your toes up and you're stretching,
if you feel an uncomfortable stretch
but it doesn't feel like a muscle stretch,
it's irritating, but it's not a muscle,
it probably is that nerve being stretched a little bit.
So don't get too aggressive when you feel that.
I can specifically feel it when I get to here.
It hurts in here somewhere,
but it's not a muscle, I can tell.
- It probably is the nerve on you
because you have a little bit of that.
- Yeah, I got some stenosis.
- Stenosis going on there.
It's really strange, the mechanism of the body.
The body loves to heal itself,
and it's amazing how it actually sends out
little microphages that go in there
and eat away the scar tissue.
- Yep, takes care of the bad things.
Body, like you said, always wants to heal itself.
- So you're only gonna do this ten times.
Then we said you're gonna wait and see
how your body reacts.
If the pain got worse, you're gonna wait a whole week
and then at the end of the week,
you're gonna try this first.
- How long do you wait?
Like that day, or the next day?
- The next day, I would say how you did over the next day.
- Next 24 hours.
- If you're the same, it really didn't make any difference,
you can continue to do it then.
You can do it every day, one time a day.
Sometimes it can take a few days to help,
sometimes months, so I would keep doing it.
- If they're doing ten of them,
and by seven, eight, or whatever,
all of a sudden it starts to feel worse and worse,
- Stop. - That's a red flag.
That means give it a break.
- Yep, I would.
So it's a week later, it hurt the first time.
This time what you're gonna do
is actually start by lying down.
This is how the McKenzie method starts actually.
You actually start by lying down for a bit,
and you might even get up to this point.
- Prone on elbows.
- Yep, prone on elbows, maybe for five minutes.
And then try the flossing. - Okay.
- So you're doing a little bit of this
kinda preparing the body to see if that
makes a difference before you do the flossing.
- If that's uncomfortable or painful,
then you better not continue with that either,
but you just have to see how it goes.
- The McKenzie system is a whole process.
Like if you watch some of our videos
where we go through the entire process,
we actually start you on pillows even.
We have you lie down, couple pillows underneath you,
if it's uncomfortable to lie flat
on your stomach without pillows.
And then we take the pillows away.
Then we lay on our stomach for a while.
Then we get up onto our elbows.
Then we start doing elbow press ups.
So this is again an adjunct treatment.
In other words you're doing it in addition to the McKenzie.
We almost always want you to do the McKenzie
because that's usually the one that's most helpful.
- Right, and just remember there's going to be
a certain number of you people
that'll be like me or someone with stenosis,
and you'll find that nothing is working here.
And maybe it is a sciatica from stenosis,
which in that case you should watch
one of our videos on exercises for lumbar stenosis.
- Spinal stenosis or spondylolisthesis,
you could be getting it from there even.
- Exactly, yep.
- All right remember Brad and I can fix
just about anything.
- Bob, I gotta tell you something.
- Okay - I got busted.
We got busted last week. - By who?
- By my wife.
- Oh no, what did she see?
- She saw the video with the snoring.
- Oh no!
(laughing)
- Yeah, she's about ready to have us delete that.
She's ready to take care of it.
- All the people it's helping.
- I know, that's what I said!
She was okay with it, it took me awhile, settle her down.
- You took her away from the edge of the cliff?
- She's okay, yeah it's a good video she said,
but maybe I should have used...
- I'm surprised you didn't run it by here first.
- Think I'm silly?
I'm knew it was gonna...
- He's a man, men don't run things,
- Well anyways...
- All right well I'm glad you're still intact.
- We can fix snoring but not a broken heart.
- You're still a marital unit.
- I hope she doesn't see this either.
- Thanks for watching. - Take care.