♪ 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.
- Brad, today we're trying something
a little different here.
- Say no more.
- No, we're mixing things up here
a little bit. - All right.
We're doing a video in partnership with a company,
which, by the way, I really like,
because they're a family-owned company.
- Sure.
- And I always like that. - You bet.
Being that, you know,
we're kind of a family-owned company too, right?
- Right, grassroots.
We started from the bottom,
and that's where - Built up.
We're now grown up.
- So this company's called Thermotex,
and they're out of Canada.
Calgary, Alberta. - Yeah.
Which by the way, my kids used to go up there for band.
- Oh, sure.
- The Calgary Stampede, I believe
it's called. - Right.
Anyway, they have a whole line of products.
They're infrared wave or infrared therapy
or infrared heat products.
- Right.
- And they have products, Brad, believe it or not,
they have them for humans,
but they also have them for equine, which is horses,
right? - Horses, yep.
And then also some small pets.
- Sure.
- So dogs and cats, and so-
- So, I fit in the mix.
- Yeah, that's right. (Brad laughing)
We got something for you now.
But the line of products that we're gonna talk
about today are for humans.
- Sure.
- And we're gonna show you just some of them,
but we're gonna really concentrate on one
at this time. - Okay.
So they have them for the different body parts.
And we're gonna talk about infrared in a minute here.
Just stick with us here. - Sure.
So the title of our program is can infrared heat provide you
with pain relief and is it better than regular heat?
- So we're talking about heat.
We're talking about hot packs, right?
- Right.
- The hot packs that you can buy and plug in,
or, you know, we use them, you can put them
in the microwave, they sell them at the store.
You put them in the microwave and you put them on your back.
- Or moist heat moist, - Moist heat.
which we use, that we actually have hot pack machines.
- Right, in the therapy department.
- In the therapy department.
When I was in therapy too, in school,
they also told us about radiant heat.
- Sure.
- Do you remember?
We used to use lamps. - Right, yeah.
I don't remember if that was before your time.
But, with all of them, I was told the same thing.
It's very superficial.
They're all the same.
- In other words, they don't go very deep in the skin.
- No, they don't very deep.
- You know, two to three millimeters.
- Right, is all.
- Just past the skin.
You're not gonna get into the muscle belly.
- Right, and that's the advantage of the infrared heat.
- Right.
- It actually can penetrate up to 60 millimeters,
which is 20 to 30 times more than regular heat.
- Than just that moist hot pack even,
or the regular outlet hot pack.
- Hot pack, yeah.
- So to me, this is a huge advantage,
because it's gonna start getting
into the joints. - Right.
It's gonna start getting into the area
that needs to get the circulation.
- So for you people in the United States.
- Yeah, how far, so the conversion, Brad.
- Yeah, 60 millimeters, 2.36 inches.
- He just did that in his head.
Isn't that amazing?
- Oh, that's not a problem.
- What a genius.
- Exactly.
- So we kind of skipped ahead to that,
but that's that's the gist of why we like this product,
is it's going go so much deeper.
And, with that, it's gonna give you a much better chance
of getting things better.
- Right, it's kind of like when we use ultrasound
in the clinic. - Right.
That is a source of deep heat.
But to get an ultrasound, it's very, it's awkward to use.
It's expensive.
This is a superior-
- It's more of a professional device.
- Right, this is for home use.
- Right, so they've got products that pretty much cover
every body part.
- Sure.
This one here is actually for the knee.
Right, Brad?
- Yeah, they, get out of the way, Bob. They gotta see.
- Sorry, Brad's trying to display them here.
Yeah so, and again, we're not gonna go into detail
on these right now.
This one is for the feet, which is kind of cool.
You slip your feet in,
I can think they call it the big slipper.
- Yeah.
- Or the big foot, something, I don't know
- Well whatever, it's plenty, it's large enough
to get both feet in in there at the same time.
- And these are different wrist ones
for right wrist, left wrist.
And we'll have to show you eventually,
that's gonna be another video.
- Right.
- They also have a big one, Brad,
that's just for the back, really, or the big muscles.
- Right.
- So, but this is their best seller,
and this is the Platinum one.
- Okay.
- The Platinum System.
And it's got three panels,
and the first thing you're gonna notice is
these panels are real hard.
They don't mold to the body.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] And there's a reason for that.
They have coils in there that they can't,
aren't supposed to bend.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] So it's protecting the coils.
- [Brad] So they're little flexible.
It's not like hard like a rock.
There's some flex. - No, they're comfortable.
- I'm not implying that they're not comfortable.
But the other thing you need to know
about infrared is that this does not necessarily need
to conform right to the body in order to get the benefit.
So for example, if you turn around, Brad,
or go to the side like that, yeah.
Now if I'm like this and this isn't,
even though this isn't touching his neck,
the rays, not the rays, the waves are gonna penetrate
into the neck nonetheless.
- Right, you're still gonna get the benefits.
It's gonna go deep.
Boy, and I can feel it right there.
- You can feel it already.
- Yeah, we have this plugged in,
and it's ready to go right now.
It usually takes 10 minutes for it to heat up,
they recommend.
But again-
- And I found that it did take about 10 minutes.
- Sure, yeah.
- My wife and I have been trading off at night using this.
- Right.
- So, for our various ailments.
So she's having trouble with a hamstring injury,
and so she's been using it on her butt.
And I just, you know, the regular tension,
the stress of working with you, Brad.
- Right, there is issues with me.
- Yeah, so I have to do that.
But let's talk about some of the things
where you really shouldn't use it, Brad.
This has been found to be very safe, by the way.
I did the research on this.
I went on to PubMed, and they said
that there's really no downfall to using this.
I mean, there's no downside at all.
- Right.
- But there are certain diagnoses that we want you
to be careful with as always.
- We call them contraindications in the therapy world.
- Yeah, so you wanna name one?
- Sure.
If you're pregnant, - Yeah.
you're not gonna use it around, you know.
- We're always worried about pregnant women.
I mean, I imagine you could use it on your legs,
or maybe up here, but I just I'd wanna stay away from it.
- We just stay safe from the start?
- Yeah, if you're a hemophiliac.
- Okay.
- That's a blood disorder.
If you have Lupus, Addison's or MS,
a lot of excess heat is not - Right, right.
recommended in those cases.
- You don't want it around a PaceMaker.
- Right, PaceMaker is always a big one too.
This one, we're not so sure about,
if you had like a knee replacement or a hip replacement.
- If you have some hardware. - Hardware in there, you know,
because it does penetrate deep, it could heat it up.
I'd be safe around it.
I'd want check with your doctor maybe on that one.
I just want to, you know, go ahead and do that.
You don't wanna use it on infants.
- Right.
- There's certain medications you might have to
ask your doctor about.
I don't know what they are, but if they're heat sensitive
in some way.
Well, for example, the patch, if you got the pain patches
that go directly on your skin,
you're not gonna put this over the top of that pain patch.
- Very good point.
And I'd even be, any open sores or anything too,
I'd be very careful with that.
- So that still leave 90% of the population.
- 90 to 95% of the population.
- Right.
- So what some conditions are it's good for,
really chronic pain. - Right.
When you're trying to help manage pain like that
this is a great thing for that.
- Exactly.
If you've got a back problem
that you just injured two hours ago,
and it's all flared up, that's not the time
to put heat on it. - No, no, no.
This is a backache that's been going on
for a week or two
or even months. - Yep.
That's when we want to do this
to increase the circulation and promote healing.
- Really, I think it really works well with arthritis,
because arthritis is a condition where
it's not gonna go away to any large extent,
but you have to manage it. - Right.
And so this is a good management system for that.
And we're gonna show you how you can go all the way through.
But tendonitis, bursitis, again,
chronic pain, neck pain, back pain, fibromyalgia.
Another good one. - Right, sure.
Again, you're trying to manage the pain.
- Right.
- So let's go ahead and start, Brad, huh?
- Sure.
- Why don't we do,
I'm gonna show the unique way I put it on my neck.
- Okay.
- So you're gonna help me though, 'cause oh, by the way,
you always wanna make sure the cord is, you know,
coming away from you.
- Right.
Oh, do you wanna talk about the cord, Brad, once?
- No, let's start putting it on,
and I'll start talking. - Then you'll talk.
Yeah, I just wanted to say this is well built.
This is not chintzily built.
It's, the cord literally is hospital grade.
It's really a nice cord.
- And it's long.
- And the material that this is made out of it.
You can tell it's gonna last.
- Both my wife and I were able to use this
without having to get an extension cord.
- Sure.
- It went to my chair, and it went to her couch.
- Sure. - Now this is my technique.
I'm gonna call this the Schrupp technique.
- Sure.
- Where I actually, I wanted to get it up
in the upper thoracic spine,
and maybe a little bit in the neck.
So I went around, and it has a long strap and a short strap.
And I went around and I strapped it in like this
and held it off on the one arm.
Then I could lean back in my chair.
- And the chair presses against it.
- Press it and holds it in there.
- Adds some more conduction there.
- And a lot of times, if you're laying in a chair
that, you know, you can go all the way back
and lean your head against,
then you're not gonna need to do this.
- Right.
- You can just put it back and lean against it,
but I'm tall, so I have trouble with that.
- Right, sure.
- Why don't you unstrap it, Brad,
and then I'm gonna show you how you can just lay down too.
You know, if you're in bed,
I would put it actually like this.
- Okay.
- And I, you know, for your neck,
I even put a little rolled towel there.
- You bet.
- And you can go like this and now it's gonna go right
into the, again, it doesn't need to conform,
but this way it goes right into the gap of the neck.
And this is really comfortable, Brad.
- Sure.
- Oh, the heat feels good.
- Right, so it is nice to get,
to maintain a good, comfortable, relaxed posture
along with the heat so that you relax,
and it allows muscles to even relax more.
You know, the heat, the deep heat is gonna help
the circulation, which is gonna promote the healing,
help being relaxed. - Right.
- It's gonna definitely give you
some temporary relief from pain.
Now, if you want to go on and get some permanent relief
from pain, then you're gonna wanna do some exercises
along with this.
- Right.
- And what Brad and I have found,
let's hit the next one first.
Why don't you put it on my shoulder, Brad?
You can just, you can go, you can just put it right up
like this, and strap it on, short strap or long strap.
- Okay.
- Now what Brad and I have found is that a lot of times
people, when they have arthritis or a joint problem,
it hurts so much, they don't do anything.
- Right.
- They stop moving.
- Right.
- And that's the worst thing that you can do.
So this, what you can do with this, is go ahead
and put this on, get the circulation going,
get the pain level down, and then you can start doing
the rotations or the range of motion that you need to do
to get things moving.
- Right, so if it's your shoulder, it might be something
as simple as hands together and getting some flexion.
- Or working the extension like this.
- Right.
- I mean, there's a whole lot of,
we have a lot of videos on this.
We're gonna probably go more into this
in some future videos on this.
- Sure.
- All right, why don't we do the back one, Brad?
I'm gonna go ahead and we'll do it on my shirt,
'cause you can see,
Lonnie, you got me yet?
When I stand up, she loses me, sometimes.
- [Lonnie] Just your head.
- It was just your head,
so we don't need to look at that face. (Bob laughing)
- All right, so now obviously you can just lay on this too.
- Right, I mean, when you sit down in a chair
put it there and relax, but here it does work.
So that, obviously not gonna get up and vacuum with this,
but it does allow you to get up and down,
and it stays where it needs to.
- Yeah, it gives you a little mobility.
If you have one of those sit to stand chairs, desks.
- Right.
- You know, you could actually get up and go down with this.
- Right, if you're working at the computer.
- Yeah, it really gives you mobility.
- Right, so you can, you know, move around a little bit.
You know, just laying back down on there, Bob,
you know, like here.
- Oh right.
- Obviously in that situation you don't need the strap.
- Right.
- [Brad] You can put it on to hold it there.
- But I can get up, I can get down,
I can keep it on all around.
- Right, there you go.
- All right, let's do the elbow on this one.
So you got the short strap?
- Just put it on, Bob.
- I'll just put it on right now.
- Yep, yep.
Just we'll make a circle, Brad, and just use this.
- Yeah, I'll get it.
Put it on your elbow.
They do have two different length straps,
but the long one works just as good,
as far as I'm concerned.
- You can go around a couple times
and really get it
in place then. - Um-hm.
So again, you know, when you think about it,
2.36 inches, it's going through the joint, Brad.
You know what I mean?
- Right, you know, 2., you know, it's wrapped around,
so your whole arm is getting warmed up.
Now this is not gonna heat it up
to where your blood's gonna boil.
- No.
- It's 36 watts, which is not very much.
- It's really comfortable, yeah, that's a good point, Brad.
You just hit the switch,
and turn it on. - Right.
There's no little rheostat or anything like that.
- Exactly.
- It just works so well.
- And it is not one of those things where it's like, oh,
if you leave it on for half hour, it's gonna be too hot.
I mean, I would feel comfortable falling asleep with this
and not burning myself.
- Right, now you can put it into a muff
and get the hands. There you go.
You can go ahead and, this is how my wife is using it.
You can just go ahead and use it on your butt
'cause she's having a hamstring issue.
- Sure.
- So you can just go ahead and lay on it like that.
And she's getting, you know, again, where the hamstring-
- You got a tight piriformis,
causes some sciatica. - Piriformis muscle.
- Yep, if you go down into the quadriceps
or hamstring issues, you know, to lower hamstring,
you can go, I get the hamstring that way.
- It is perfect for that. - I can get the quad that way.
- Yeah, you can wrap it around.
- And obviously the same with the knee.
- Knee, yep.
- You gotta go-
- Calf muscle.
- And again, if I put it on top,
it's pretty much between this panel and this panel.
It's going through.
- Right, you're getting good-
- Very good for plantar fasciitis, too.
I mean you can just go ahead and put your foot on it.
- Right.
- And what I like about that then is it is gonna heat it up,
and then you can stretch it.
- Pull that shoe off, Bob.
The bottom panel gets the bottom of the foot
and it wraps around.
It really is a full wrap.
Very nice. - Yep.
- So yeah, this actually is really comfortable.
I haven't tried that yet, and I haven't tried
the the big slipper yet. - Sure.
So what Thermotex is doing, Brad,
they're giving a trial offer here.
This is a pricey device.
I mean, but my guess is, you know,
once you have it you're gonna use it daily.
And that is what their recommendation is,
is that you use it, if you're having a problem,
you're supposed to use it twice a day
for 30 to 45 minutes.
- And there is a scientific study,
I read the scientific study.
It's done well.
And it's showing benefits-
- Of doing it that long.
- Up to four weeks, yeah.
- Right now you don't need to do that forever.
That's, they're recommending that for 10 to 14 days.
And then after that, you can drop down to once.
- Sure.
- Now you may think how am I gonna do,
spend that much time doing this?
But you can do it while you're watching TV,
or a lot of times, even while you're working.
- Right.
- So, I mean, that's why I think it's doable,
that you can do those amounts.
- You just need to be a little creative,
and you'll be amazed.
- But they do have a trial offer.
It's normally $249, but if you hit the link below,
it's gonna be for 219. - Right.
So they're gonna giving you 30 bucks off.
- And if you're taking pain meds or some other meds
and you're paying, you know how fast
some of those drug costs can be,
and this is gonna last years
versus one use - Right.
of the medication.
- Yep, so, you know, give it a shot.
And if you want more information,
I think you can hit that link below too,
and it'll give you more information at Thermotex.
And remember, Brad and I can fix just about anything-
- But that broken heart,
but this could be, we could start-
- This might be doing it.
- We can start doing a study with this on it.
Maybe it'll-
- We are working on it.
Thanks a lot.
- Take care.