♪Bob and Brad♪ ♪the two most famous♪ ♪physical therapists♪ ♪on the internet.♪ - Hi, folks I'm Bob
Schrupp physical therapist. - Brad Heineck physical therapist. - You're the real most
famous physical therapist on the internet. - In our opinion of course Bob. Do you have sciatica? We got some self tests here. This video by the way is a part of a series of videos on sciatica. If you've just happened
to wander upon this video. If you go to bobandbrad.com, look for the series
videos or video programs, you'll see one on sciatica and you can follow all the ones that are part of this series. - Right. - Alright, so it's highly recommended that you see a physician
and have tests done by him or her to determine whether
or not you have sciatica but we always like to have you
going in aimed with knowledge or armed with knowledge, I'm sorry. And these are some tests
that you could do yourself to kind of maybe give you an indicator whether or not you have sciatica or maybe it's something
else like sciatica. - Right, self diagnosis. You're getting into
you know, professionals can have a hard time diagnosing. So if you're doing it
yourself as a lay person, take this with
- a grain of salt. - a grain of salt that you're
just educating yourself and you're learning things here. - Right. Okay, we're gonna start
off with the first one. This is called a seated
straight leg raise. It doesn't matter because
you can do it on both sides. So I'm gonna go ahead, I'm
gonna test the left side first. I'm gonna straighten the leg out, I'm gonna pull my toe toward me and I'm gonna bend my neck down. Now I got stretching pain with that, but if that increases pain
down your back into your leg, possibly could be sciatica. - Right, and this is nice. You should compare one leg to the other and if you feel a big difference and a different type of pain, the one of sciatica,
that kind of stretching feels much different
than a muscle stretch. - Right, that's a very good point, Brad because I do feel
stretching on both sides. So the next one. We're gonna put a little
compression on the spine. So first, you're gonna sit slouched, and then while you're sitting slouch, you're gonna grab the seat
pan and pull up on it. So what that's doing is, I'm puting pressure through the spine. When I do this, I want you
to put your neck this way and see what the pain is like and then put your neck this way. If it's worse this way, and
it's going down the leg, good possibility that you
might have a disc problem. - At this I'll give a precaution. If you sit down and you slouch and already the pain is getting worse and you're getting pain down the leg, you're done.
- Yeah. You don't need to do any further. - Don't do any pulling,
don't do the neck thing. It means that you need to stop. Doesn't mean it's sciatica
but it's an indication. but certainly don't do anything more because you make things worse.
- Yeah, we don't wanna make things worse. Very good point, Brad. All right, this one is taking you off into kind of a different direction. I'm gonna have you reach
forward toward the floor. If you can go all the way down, go ahead, go all the way down. What we're looking for on this, does this decrease your pain? Okay, let's say it does, let's say the pain actually decreases. Then I want you to stand up. Oh sorry about that, Mike. I know I'm tall here. Reach overhead. And does that increase your pain? And number three, are you over 55? If you have yes to all these, then you might have spinal stenosis. - Right, so in other
words, you bend forward, oh, it feels better. And usually sitting feels
better with stenosis. - Right, right. If it feels worse going forward like this, now again we're looking
at maybe more sciatica. But if you reach forward and it's better, you reach above and the pain is worse, and if you're over 55, which means arthritis and stuff
has had a chance to develop and degenerative changes, you
might have spinal stenosis. - So with all of these,
you're gonna respect the pain. You don't wanna push into
the pain and get it bad. It's just, oh, it's starting to hurt. That's enough to stop. You don't have to see a little bit more. Don't think no pain, no gain. That's absolutely not what we're after. - And the final thing, I think
it is also often referred to as false sciatica, is the piriformis. Now this the piriformis is a
small muscle in your pelvis. - It goes from here to your sacrum and it goes right over the
top of that sciatic nerve. - Or the sciatic nerve
might pierce through it. - Sure. - And if that muscle becomes irritated, it can send pain down your leg. So this is one test for
possibly piriformis syndrome. You wanna lay back Brad and show that? Yeah, you got your mic issue here huh? - We're all right. Okay, you can do this in your bed or you know, carpeted
floor works well too. So if you go up and you
bring your knees towards you and then across to the opposite knee, that actually puts-- - [Bob] Opposite shoulder.
- Opposite shoulder. Thank you Bob. I'm not even talking properly, but that stretches the piriformis. If you do this, and you
compare one side to the other and one side, let's say
this is my piriformis that's tight or painful. Usually when you do this, you feel it there and it's
tight and there's pain. And then you do the other leg
and there's a big difference. It goes farther, there's no symptoms, all you feel is a normal stretch in that part of the buttock,
chances are you know, it's a good chance that you
have piriformis syndrome. - Some piriformis involved. - Not for sure though,
it just means it's more and you know. - Probably gonna do some more tests and that's when you
need to see the doctor. But again, that kind of
gives you an indicator that, hey, it's something you could
bring up to your physician and say, hey, do I maybe
have piriformis syndrome? - Right, I mean, I've had
people do this comparison and that made it better already, you know? - Yeah, just by doing it. - Then it's clear it's piriformis, And then you just do the stretch more. - Doing the stretch, right. All right, remember again,
don't leave things to doubt. Check things out with your physician. - Right.
