♪ Bob and Brad the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapists on the internet ♪
Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist
Brad Heineck, physical therapist
Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the Internet
In our opinion, of course, Bob.
When you are absolutely sick and tired of your back pain
try these 3 things
We're gonna give you some really helpful hints that are--
help you get that back pain to go away! -Sure!
-You're tired of it! -Right!
-Send it packing. -It's amazing
Sometimes, you find the right thing
and it's just like the light switch. You can turn it off
Well, not instantly, but within minutes. -Right
All right, by the way, if you are new to our channel, please take a second to subscribe to us
We provide videos on how to stay healthy, fit, pain-free, and we upload everyday
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Woo!
And we're Bob and Brad
You like us and we like you. -There you go!
Say no more, Bob.
So the first thing you're gonna do when you got back pain
If you haven't tried these things you've got to find the magic movement.
You had a different word for it. What was it?
Directional preference.
Directional-- I like mine better. magic movement
[Brad laughs]
So-- you're gonna try one of 3 movements to see if it decreases your back pain
So let's do it-- the first one Brad.
Can I have a pillow? -Sure
The first one you're gonna do
and this one tends to be good for
sometimes for arthritis
sometimes for spinal stenosis
Sometimes for spondylosis
So you're gonna start off by just warming up a little bit by pulling one knee to the chest
And then maybe the other knee to the chest
And then you're gonna go ahead and pull both to the--
you're gonna go kind of "pressure on, pressure off"
Kind of rocking back and forth like this
So you really want to pay attention to the pain and listen to your body,
If initially there's some pain with it
but it improves with every repetition, that's a good thing
continue to do it
But if it hurts and as you do more repetitions, it gets--
stays-- continues to hurt or gets worse, that's the red flag.
That means that's not your magic movement.
So you want to stop then -And this is really unlikely to help
a disc problem -Right
-This is probably gonna make a disc problem worse. This one
All right, let's go to one, Brad, that almost everybody can usually do
-Sure -And that's the trunk rotation
You're in the same position. You're just gonna rotate your knees back and forth like this
And sometimes what you'll find is that it hurts in one direction
But doesn't hurt any other
so you go ahead and just work the direction that feels good
and then eventually try the other direction again
Am I missing anything Brad? You look confused.
No, no, I'm not.
I'm just-- I was thinking about turning the tables so they could see it.
But can you see that pretty good?
So it's like a windshield wiper -Right
And by the way, you can do these exercises every hour
That's the key to this, to some extent -Sure
You're trying to get movement
and you don't just do these 1 time a day
That's not gonna take away your pain. -Sure
You got to try to do it several times a day
5 to 6 to 7 to 8 times a day -Right
And typically we got 3 options.
You're gonna find one of them that's gonna
clearly work better than the others.
That's the one you're gonna do.
Don't do the ones that-- it's not the magic movement.
Let's go to number 3
And we're touching upon these pretty lightly today, Brad.
You can take this away. -Oh, yeah
We have these in more detail on some of our other videos
But we just want to introduce them to you in case
you're new to our channel
and new to the concept of treating back pain with movement
So, the last one here that we're gonna try is actually extension.
And this is going to help, I would say, probably 80% of the population
and don't give up on it right away
You know, if you have a little bit of pain
go ahead and give it a try a couple times to see if
after it loosens up, if the pain actually starts to feel better
Sure
and you know
If you're having back pain that's radiating down the leg
We're looking for the pain in the leg to decrease first
In other words, the pain should go out of the leg
and seem like it's migrated or moving up towards the low back
-Precisely, Brad. There you go!
And, you know, what you want to do is
you want to keep the pelvis down on the bed
or on the floor.
You don't want to be lifting up like this
[Brad] Yup, we don't need that
And you may want to start with just short arcs like this
and eventually you want to move all the way up to here
I mean, that's where you want to do
Get it to this point where you're actually keeping the pelvis on the floor
and but-- actually
getting your arms all the way straight -Right
Again, these should continue to feel better as you do them.
If they get worse, it's not the magic movement
It's-- you want to stay away from it
or maybe come back to it when your back settles down
The other magic movement you could do is actually walking. Walking is always just universally good.
Especially if you don't have increased back pain.
Let's go to number two Brad!
The second thing I want you to try is, we're big fans of infrared heat
Brad and I both use this. Brad uses this
on a regular basis. Pretty much every night, right Brad?
Yeah. It's on my
It's on my recliner. So when I sit down to work on the computer or read or watch the
the screen then... -The same with me with me. It's my chair at night
I just-- a lot of times I just I don't even maybe need it
but I put it on sometimes almost as preventatively but-- -Particularly in the wintertime
So yeah, why is this better than regular heat? Regular heat only penetrates a few millimeters
This actually goes up to 60 millimeters, which is actually converts to how many inches Brad?
2.36 inches. It's a chunk.
So it goes deep down. It's gonna get down into the tissues. It's an even heat
There's not a rheostat on there. Is that what they call it, Brad?
Right, are a lot of them have three--
You know all three levels: Medium, low, and higher.
This is just on or off. -Yeah. -It's a it's a modest heat feels good
It's it's a bit pricey
We're gonna warn, you we do have-- if you use our link below you'll get a sizable discount and free shipping
-Right -So you want to make sure you do that but
Infrared heat is a little more expensive
but I think it's worth it.
And the thing is, you want to-- if you have back pain
Ideally you try this twice a day
and it takes about ten minutes to heat up
A lot of times I just leave mine on cuz it's so inexpensive to run. -Right
I mean, they only cost a couple pennies a day -That's because you forget to turn it off.
I forget to turn it off too!
Okay, let's be honest
All right, but you want to leave it on for like 30 to 45 minutes, and I know what people are saying
How can I do that? I got to work.
Well, you can actually put this on. What they come with now is some extra straps.
You gonna help me put this on, Brad? Which way should I go? This way? -Yep. There you go.
So, you can actually strap it on like this
and what the double benefit of this is it actually straightens your posture out.
So instead of rounding out like this, which is bad for your back, it actually straightens it out.
It's especially good for that pain
that's up a little bit higher. -Yes -Because it works really well for that
You can move it like this or down -Right -But you can actually use it on the lower back, too
Well, turn around, Bob!
Sure, looks like a parachute from the back
Now, one thing that is nice about this is the cord doesn't go into the air. There's a
[Bob laughing] It doesn't go into the air?--Yeah there's a convenience extension cord that easily comes off
which makes it nice. You can get up and walk around, and then you come back and plug it in right at your waist level
And it's an 8-foot cord. So it's--
It'll give you some room to move around.
This is, if you will, commercial grade or hospital grade. There's nothing cheap about this from the
electronic-- you know the electrical end of it to the how it's designed and put together. It's gonna last
Yeah, It's been approved by a Health Canada, because this was these people are from Canada. Wendy, Hi!
It's also been approved by the FDA -Right
So alright
Let's go to the last thing, Brad. The last thing--
I want to make sure you do, because back pain is often a sitting problem.
People used to think it was a lifting problem.
It's often a sitting problem.
I want to make sure that you're correcting your posture when you're sitting
and usually that involves
especially like in your car, or if you sit for a living
It's gonna involve some type of back support
and there's there's a ton of them -Right
There's just three examples
Three different shapes. -These are all McKenzie rolls and
Generally, what we recommend is you take a towel, first, and roll it up
and put it in your back and
And then after you determine kind of what thickness you like and where you like it,
maybe you can just stick with the towel even
You know, it's gonna give you that support, especially in the car.
I know during a day it might be a little more difficult
But these do have straps on them that help keep them in place. -Right
-But a lot of times people, when they're having back pain--
tend to seem like they want the thicker one -Sure
and then later on they seem to kind of migrate to a thinner one
But it's a personal preference, and you'll know if it's--
You know, especially the towel roll
that's the nice thing about a towel roll. You can start whatever size you have
You'll know if it's too thick or not enough, and then you just reshape the towel and go at it again.
All right. Well, let's hope you can get rid of that nasty back pain. -Very good. Good luck!