♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
(Bob claps)
- Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Okay, we're the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, spinal decompression made easy.
We got amazing, pain-relieving results with this sometimes
if it works on the right person.
- Sure.
- And you can testify to this yourself because you use it.
- And I've done it with, just recently,
the last two patients in the last two weeks,
I've been using these techniques.
It's very simple to do.
You can do 'em at home and-
- You give 'em a try and see what you get.
- But!
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people are following us by the hordes now.
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- [Brad] There you go.
- It'll hit you right now, right in the head.
- Spinal decompression.
- What are we talking about, Brad?
- You know, this is one of those terms that,
it really wasn't seemed to be used that much years ago
and more so now, and I don't know if it's-
- Becoming more popular or-
- Yeah, if it's kind of just one of those terms that's-
- Something more in vogue right now?
- Yeah, exactly. - Yeah.
- But you know, another term would be like traction.
- Right. - You know, traction.
- That's what we used to call it, traction.
- Right, traction was used very commonly years ago.
And then surgeries came along and then, you know,
traction on the spine was is not as common anymore
because surgery's easier and-
- Right.
- But not always necessary, you know?
And sometimes this part is skipped
and it goes right to surgery, you know,
it's like, what's the old saying?
If you show...
You know, show a carpenter a nail,
they're gonna use a hammer immediately.
- Yeah, anybody who has a hammer,
everything they look at needs nailing.
- Right.
In other words, you know, if you go to a surgeon,
they think surgery,
they skip the conservative route sometimes.
I don't want to get any surgeons mad at us.
- That's right. We like all people to like us.
- But anyways, so decompression is traction.
So we're gonna talk a little bit about,
why would you want traction or your spine
to be decompressed or pulled apart?
So, you know, here's a spine we're trying to pull it apart
and really actually elongate it to a degree.
We're not doing this in any great, great amount-
- No, not any large amount, no.
- It's not like we're going two inches taller or anything.
- Right. - But if we look at,
these are our cup vertebraes,
if you've been watching our channel,
you know we use these for demonstration on a regular basis
when we're talking about the spine.
- So we took two of the bones outta here
and we made them larger.
- Right. - There they sit.
- The bones would be the vertebra.
And then the green ball represents a disc.
And a disc in the human body is not a solid piece
of cartilage or whatever.
I kind of thought, that's what I used to imagine it
before I got educated on this.
- Like a hockey puck.
- Yeah, exactly.
It's not, there's actually fluid inside the disc
that allows the disc to act like a little shock absorber
and allows movement in the spine.
So if that disc starts to fail,
and through compression through the spine,
that disc can bulge out just like that.
Can you, you got a good close-up on there?
And that's no good.
- Right. - It hurts.
- There's structures that can hit back here.
It can hit the spinal cord or the spinal nerves
and nerve roots. - Right, right.
- [Bob] It can send pain down your leg.
- [Brad] Right, it's a good way to get sciatica.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- So what we wanna do is take the pressure,
or decompress, the vertebra so that as we go apart
and decompress them, it allows the disc
to go back to its normal shape, take pressure off the nerves
and life is good again.
- Yeah and the nerves are coming out of small holes too.
So a lot of times just by opening those holes a little bit
you might take a little pressure off the nerves
if they're a little inflamed.
Yeah, you can see some of the foramen, as they call it.
- You're squinting pretty hard,
looks like you can hardly see it.
- [Camera Operator] Got it.
- There you go!
Okay, so there's, you know, between every vertebra
there's actually two spinal nerves, we've got two holes.
There's all kinds of potential.
- Right.
- Okay.
So, we're gonna decompress.
Now, there are very expensive traction machines.
I worked with one a number of years ago
and they work very nice but they're very expensive,
that help give traction but you can just use gravity
and you can do this at home
or we do all these techniques in the clinic as needed.
So the first one is just using gravity.
Should we go ahead and use the chairs, Bob?
- Sure.
So you're gonna need a couple good solid chairs though,
depending on which way you do it.
- Yeah, don't use folding chairs.
- Should I do the tops first? - Sure.
- So especially if you're holding onto the top of the chair.
- Yep.
- You need a good solid chair that's gonna, you know,
test it a little bit to make sure you're not gonna-
- Right. - You know, tip away here.
- So, you know, I'm gonna get my weight onto my palms here.
And you know, what you can do actually to kind of test this
actually is if you can kind of lean forward with one leg
to start off with. - Sure, right.
- And eventually even kind of go forward with both legs
like this and now I'm just barely on my toes.
- So his body weight is being supported by his arms.
So you wanna lock your elbows out,
it's much easier that way. - Yep.
- He's got his toes, I don't know if you can see it,
but his toes are still touching the floor.
- But barely. - Barely.
- [Brad] And then you need to practice
learning how to relax your core or your stomach muscle.
- [Bob] Probably taking deep breaths would help, right Brad?
- And when that happens,
that allows the spine to have some traction on it
and you get that decompression.
And when that happens, now if you do this,
the only way I'll have my patient continue to do this
is when they take the weight, unload the weight
through their spine, then says, "Oh, that feels good."
You know?
And it should give those immediate responses.
If not, it's not applicable.
It's not gonna be a treatment for you.
- And if it does, I would recommend that you do it
like every hour then. - Right, exactly.
- I mean, that's the whole thing, don't think about,
"Well, I'm gonna do one treatment today."
No, decompress that spine every hour
and maybe you can get some results.
By the way, it might help to even put a towel
or something on here, Brad.
- Right, to help the pressure on your palms.
- Yeah, to help you pressure on your palms.
So I started feeling it here, you know, as I compare here
how this one's a lot more comfortable than this one.
- Sure, yeah.
Now you're gonna hang like this for, you know,
between 10 and 30 seconds, typically.
And then you're gonna come back off.
Your arms will get tired. - Yeah, it will.
- You're just not gonna hang there for, you know,
20 minutes, by no means.
So again, 10 to 30 seconds and it should feel comfortable
and give that relax if you got sciatica,
that pain in the leg should start to come out.
Then you know you're right on the money.
- So if you wanna go to maybe a little safer method,
you know, if you can get down on your knees,
you can start, you know on your knees like this.
Finding, and these are a little bit easier
on the the wrists then too because of the cushioned here.
And now I'm just gonna lift up.
I'm actually gonna be on the edge of the chair here.
Can you catch that, Liz, so she's seeing that.
- Yeah, so right there.
Space there- - [Bob] And again,
like you say, you gotta try to relax.
- [Brad] Yeah, this takes a little practice for some people.
Some people I have do it right away
and other people I have to coach them a little bit.
- I imagine it depends on the length of your body
and the length of your arms.
I mean, some people probably,
they're gonna have trouble getting up
and other people are gonna probably be well above here.
- Yeah, so the spacing with your chairs, et cetera.
- Right.
- There's always that component there.
Bob, should we go to the other method?
Instead of hanging that way, we can go right to it.
If you happen to have a bar at home
or something you can hold onto like a pull-up bar.
This works really well.
And it's nice to have one that you don't have to jump up to.
- [Bob] Right.
- But like right now I'm holding on here
and I'm supporting the weight through my legs.
I'm gonna gently and slowly let that traction go through.
And you know, right now I probably got
about 50% of my weight going through my arms and my back.
And it feels good.
- [Bob] Now you've become a big fan of this one, Brad.
- Oh, I love this. - I mean, Brad's got,
- [Brad] Brad's got spondylolisthesis and-
- I'm happy, Bob!
- And a little spinal stenosis.
- Yep.
- And he really, really likes this one.
- And the other benefit,
this can be really healthy for your shoulders too,
as well. - Yes, yes.
- We've done a lot of videos on that, how it can,
the stretching of the shoulders, how it can help.
- Now, if my hands didn't get tired
I could hang here for quite a bit longer,
in regards to my back and how it feels on my back.
- And that's why they recommend sometimes,
is that you actually do wear gloves.
- Sure.
- It's just a little easier to hang.
- But again, I'm gonna say 10 to 30 seconds,
maybe three repetitions.
And if you get really positive results,
you're gonna do it, like Bob said, every hour
until that leg pain or that back pain goes away.
I do it for maintenance,
even though my back doesn't feel good,
it still feels good when my back is feeling good.
You know what I'm saying?
- [Bob] I do pull-ups twice a week
and I always hang, you know, in between-
- That's part of the pull-up- - Part of the pull-up regimen.
- Sure, okay.
- You wanna show manually how you can do it to somebody?
- Sure. Why don't you, you wanna lay down, Bob?
- Sure. - Now this is something I do
with a lot of my patients with back pain.
And when I'm doing assessment,
oftentimes as part of my initial assessment, I'll just,
we'll do it on this side.
I'll gently grab, I'll say,
"Can you just relax a little bit?"
And I'll gently grab their ankle and I just gently pull.
- So are you pulling on the side
that generally has pain, Brad?
- Typically, but I'll pull on one side
and I'm not pulling hard, I'm not jerking,
I'm not getting weird.
I just pull gently and I say, you know,
I'm not pulling very hard, am I?
- No, not at all.
- And when I pull this hard,
if that person says, "Boy, that feels good,"
then maybe I'll go a little harder,
but I'll only do it if it feels good,
it makes the pain go away.
You're not gonna do it if it makes it worse, for sure.
So I may do one leg and I'll assess the other leg,
and then I'll actually do both legs.
And like I said, in the last, well, two weeks
I've had two different people where I've used this treatment
and I'll usually go for 30 seconds cause then I get tired.
But then the one lady, she had a son
and her son would do this at home.
She'd lay on the bed and it worked out really well.
She did it two or three times a day
for about 10 to 20 seconds.
- Well, the other thing, Brad and I were talking about
is that if this does feel good,
then maybe you do want to go on to what the next topic is,
getting a traction device. - Right.
- I mean, it does help. - Sure.
- You know, you may want to get,
formally get an inversion table or something.
- Yeah, we do have a good video on inversion table.
It's been pretty popular in the last year.
But you know, that's the table
where you're laid down like Bob does and there are...
Clamps, well they're cushioned clamps.
They're comfortable, I used to have one,
on your ankle and then the table tips you
and then your body weight from your trunk
acts as the the weight for the traction.
And so inversion tables can be an option.
I wouldn't just go buy one though.
I would go to a store that has them
and you can try them right there.
That's what I did with mine.
And that's what I have my patients do.
Cause if you spend $200, $300 on an inversion table
and you get on it and it doesn't do it
and you get headaches because of whatever, you know,
then you have to try and sell it again
or take it back or whatever.
- No, what I have done with patients, by the way Brad,
is I've done it where, there's a manipulation I do
where I grab, have one person grab the leg,
another person grabs their arms.
- I think I would-
- And yeah, then I do a manipulation.
- Yeah.
- It works really good for mid-back.
I mean, it's the only one that works on some people.
- Sure, yeah.
Maybe we should do a video on that someday.
- Well, and on those cases,
I'm having people pull as hard as they can.
They're like, you know, they're,
the person on there, they're pulling as hard as they can.
And the person on their arms is pulling as hard as they can.
- Really?
Do they get taller?
- They should, if they don't. (Brad laughs)
So, I see we're out of time here, Brad.
- Okay, all right.
- Thanks for watching.