♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the Internet ♪
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Here we are, the most famous physical therapists
on the Internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- The title of this video is
"This is Causing Your Sciatica slash Back Pain,
"How to Stop."
This video is a part of a series of videos on sciatica.
You want to catch the whole series?
Go to bobandbrad.com, go to the programs section,
and you'll find it there.
So let's get started, Brad.
Today, we're gonna talk about pain makers, basically.
Some position, movement, injury, or thing
is causing your sciatica.
So, we refer to it as a pain maker.
- Right, and oftentimes, people are not aware of it.
We've had many cases where we've made dramatic improvements
by changing a posture or a particular chore or movement
that a person's doing
causing the problem. - Yeah, some people think
they're just having pain all day long
and they don't realize there's things
that are causing their pain, certain movements.
- We'll give some examples.
- So, your job is gonna be to work on that,
try to figure out what the pain makers are in your life.
Our job is gonna be to show you
how to avoid them or to modify them
so they can stop hurting you.
One of the common pain makers for positioning
is a slouched, slumped posture.
Basically a C curve.
So Brad, if you were,
this is the head, this is the pelvis.
Do you wanna face the same way
as this, Brad? - Oh, sure.
- And then go ahead and just kind of slouch.
Yep.
That position alone
starts putting a lot of stress on the disc.
That's okay Brad, you can stop now.
On the discs and the ligaments so they can get stretched out
and make the back unstable.
So, all that's a problem.
So even when you're doing simple things,
like picking keys off the floor.
I've got some keys, Brad. - Oh, good.
- So if you pick the keys off incorrectly,
your legs straight, back rounded out like this.
- Through here.
My back doesn't round out that much anymore
because I try to keep it straight so often, so.
Let's give some other examples,
Brad. - Well, for example,
brushing your teeth.
Very common, say, "It bothers me
"after I get done in the bathroom in the morning."
It's like, so they're doing this,
and even just that much flexion in your back
can be enough to irritate that disc and get that sciatica.
Sometimes you don't feel it while you're doing it,
but it's after the event that it kicks in.
- Then you start blaming that,
"My sciatica's just bad all the time."
And it's not.
There's something that's actually bringing it on.
How 'bout getting out of bed, Brad?
- Sure.
- So, a lot of us,
not me anymore but I used to get out of bed like this.
Rounded out like this.
This is rounded, this is putting a tremendous amount
of strain on your back.
So it's the first thing you do in the morning,
you get out of bed,
and already you're firing up your sciatica
and your back pain.
- Bad way to start the day for your poor back.
- How 'bout vacuuming, Brad? Do you want to show that?
- Absolutely, Bob.
I spend hours vacuuming at home.
(laughing) (wheels clattering)
- Why do I have trouble believing that?
- Actually, we have very little carpet.
(laughing)
But, a lot of times,
particularly trying to get under the table, right in here.
And I've had a lot of people say,
"Vacuuming or sweeping really bothers my back."
Yeah, so you really need to walk,
and kind of like, Bob does it--
- Yeah, we'll be doing that,
we'll be showing that - Oh, okay.
- but right now we're just
showing things that could cause it.
- Sure.
- The future videos are gonna be showing
in great detail how to do things without hurting yourself.
Picking up laundry.
Another common one, Brad.
That's quite some laundry you have there.
- Well, yeah, a lot of braces we've been cleaning up.
- So again, this would be a case where
you lean forward, straight legs,
and you think, "This isn't that heavy,
"why is this hard on your back?"
But again, backs tend to wear out over time.
You are not Gumby.
For you guys that may be a little older,
you know, been around for awhile.
Gumby could bend and bend and bend
and never would hurt, right? - Sure.
- But you're not Gumby,
you're not Pokey. - He's always
got a smile on his face.
- He's got a smile on his face.
What happens over time is the discs and ligaments
can wear out and can actually get some microtears
or you can get a herniated disc or a bulging disc.
- I can think of a situation, I had a patient,
she had back pain, terrible problem.
I started talking to her,
it ended up being in her car she had a really low seat.
We put a cushion in her seat to raise her up
and changed her posture. - Ah ha!
- Problem was 80% gone
just because of changing the posture in her car.
- Yep, and what Brad's talking about here is,
this could be at a computer or a car or anywhere else,
but especially, you look at this seat,
it's kinda not straight up and down,
and you kinda lean into it like that.
And look what I do right away,
'cause I gotta bring my head forward so I can see,
I'm gonna be rounded out.
- And people are in this posture a lot having no clue
because they're not aware of their body position.
And you know, Bob and I are guilty of that as well.
You know, we see ourselves on video and say,
"Whoa, we gotta watch our posture."
- It takes a constant surveillance almost
and Brad and I can look around and we can see people
that are in poor posture
and predict with fair certainty
that they're gonna get hurt in the near future--
- We should do a study on that.
- We should do a study!
We go around saying, put a tag on people.
(laughing)
- I got another one, Bob.
- Sure. - As a matter of fact,
a woman was having problems at her desk at work.
Very much painful, Nicole's friend.
She got one of the tables that raise up and down
so she could stand while she worked.
Back pain, gone.
- I've seen that more than once.
- Just from a change in posture.
- I've seen that more than once.
Just by getting a standing table,
they were able to take away their back pain.
- Including yourself, right?
- Including myself, yep.
All right so, go ahead and watch the remaining videos
in the series as you think they pertain to you.
- Sure.
- Thanks for watching.
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