♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hi, folks I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- We are the most famous physical therapist on the internet.
- In our opinion of course, Bob.
- Neck cracking, is it safe?
See this study, Brad's found a great study on kind of the
breakdown of some of the injuries that
may happen with neck cracking.
I'm kind of--
Am I giving it away, Brad?
- No, that's fine, that's fine Bob, but yeah,
alright. - Well, we'll get into it.
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- Sure.
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What we're giving away this week is, right Mike?
The 10s unit right, we're gonna be giving,
I think a couple of these 10s units away.
Really great for pain control, especially chronic pain,
get you off those opioids, y'know.
- Right. - Just, maybe
decrease the use of them.
- Right. - So,
a great option for that.
- Alright.
So, Bob, the old neck cracking, we know, you know,
people out there, they--
I have some people I know that they
crack their neck just
for the fun of it. - Constantly, right.
- Y'know, because they make the noise and they
do it in front of other people
just to freak'em out a little bit.
It's also very commonly done with the chiropractor.
There are some physical-- - Osteopaths.
- Osteopaths, physical therapists.
- In some in some countries--
We do high-grade mobilizations.
They don't really call it--
(chuckles)
- But we can--
I mean, I don't, I don't know
any that do. - Right.
But I've been to a course that said, legally, I guess,
a physical therapist can do--
- High-grade mobilizations, yeah, they can.
- Grade five--
- Grade five, yeah. - Which we'll get into.
So neck adjustments, are they safe?
I've been to the chiropractor many times when I was younger
before I got into therapy, and they--
I would go there for back problem and
they would crack my low back, and then they would--
or, adjust, I should say.
- Yeah.
- Manipulate my thoracic spine, and they'd say,
"well, we got to do the whole spine,"
and then I'd lay there
and they grab your head,
"just relax, just relax" and
(grunt)
and I just hated it.
it's like, "I'm relaxing, I'm relaxing,"
(quiet grunt)
and it never hurt, never had any problem,
and then what made me think about this
is when I became a therapist,
and I was working in a nursing home
and one of my patients was a resident there,
had his neck manipulated,
and there was a severe injury as a result of it.
- Sure. - That's what put him
in the nursing home, and I thought, y'know,
if this is a possibility, I don't want to do that, because
I can fix my own neck--
- Right. - With exercises,
quite well with the knowledge I have now, so I think
that's an option that should be considered by people
if they want to. - I think it's like
anything, there's risks involved,
like there's risk involved, in all surgeries.
- Right. - There are risks involved
in some treatments,
and you should know that there are risks, that, y'know,
it's not just 100% safe.
- Right, because--
- We're not trying to get down
on chiropractors or osteopaths.
- But know what's going on.
- Know what's going on, go in
with your eyes wide open. - There, people who manipulate
and adjust necks are highly trained.
- Yes they are. - They know
what they're doing, but it's not 100%.
- Right.
- Let's look at the neck and see
what the tissues are that are of concern.
You'll have to zoom in for this, Mike.
- Need help, I--
- Yeah, if you hold that, here we got the spine
and the muscles and stuff,
there's no issue, you're not going to pull a muscle
or rip a muscle if it--
But, if you look at the spine,
we have the facet joints at every level,
and that's what makes the pop, by the way.
It's one of the joint's cavities,
and the nitrogen goes from a liquid to a gas
and you hear that pop, and, y'know, people--
- A release of gas, yep.
- Yep.
Then we have the spinal nerves.
- These are cut off, they actually keep going into the arm.
- Right, but a big thing here
is the cora--
Or, the artery, okay?
There's two of them, one on each side,
and these arteries go up through the spine
and into the brain, into the Circle of Willis,
which is another story.
- Right. - But it's
critical for brain function, and if that's interrupted,
that can cause a problem.
- Well, look at what happens when
I'm twisting this neck here.
I don't know if you can see that, but you can see there's--
There's stress on that artery.
- Sure.
- So, and there is a, you know,
in a very, very small percentage of cases.
- Right.
- You can actually--
Can cause a stroke or stroke-like symptoms.
- Right.
- Mike, our camera person was just talking about this
this week where he knew a young girl that this happened to
in our little town of Winona.
- Sure, sure. - So--
- So let's look at how often does it happen--
No, I found a study
that actually goes through some actual incidences.
It's from the JRSM, which is a journal of
Royal Society of Medicine.
This study was done in July of 2007,
so, I'm not going to say any more about it
but look this up if you're interested
in finding out what can happen,
they have a list of, it's, I believe 30 different injuries
as a result of spinal manipulation,
most of them, not all of them, to the neck,
but a great number of them to the neck.
They tell the injury,
who did it somewhere, chiropractors--
- Very well delineated, I mean--
- Right, it's all spelled out.
So, it is something that you may be concerned with,
and if, you know,
if you have a good relationship with your chiropractor
and you can trust them, it's no big deal.
- Same with your osteopath or anybody else.
- Right.
- And it also
is another reason why you should take pause on
cracking your own neck though--
- Yes, right. - Y'know what I--
Unless you wanna do it safely,
like we showed the other day.
- Yeah, but that's really not--
- That was not was not an adjustment.
- Right, because to crack your neck when you get it done--
- You do a high velocity.
- Right, it's a grade five manipulation, high velocity,
low amplitude, it takes a lot of training.
- Right.
- A lot of training,
and that's what these people, professionals--
- Right, you don't want'em messing around,
and of course, there's certain cases where
you don't want to have it done at all,
like rheumatoid arthritis, y'know,
where the ligaments can be loosened and--
- Right, and the professionals know that.
- They all know that.
- They're very well aware of it.
- So-- - So, very good,
a little--
- Trying to keep you educated out there.
- Exactly.
- Alright, thanks for watching.
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