In the video, Dr. Troy Learn demonstrates how to use a lumbar wedge and neck wedge which helps restore alignment in your spine.
To set up a free consultation call (360) 260-6903.
Video Transcription
It’s Dr. Troy here from Zenaptic Chiropractic, home of the charging rhinos.
Today I want to talk about fulcrums and spinal molding.
A lot of patients ask me how do I do spinal molding? If you’ve got a spinal molding wedge from us or in general here’s what you want to do.
First thing I always recommend when you’re new at this is start out lying on your bed, eventually, you can graduate to the floor. It’s going to be a firmer surface but this could be pretty intense for you. We’re going to put this under your neck; this is the one for your neck. The ones you have are probably going to be grey but these are blue ones, they are covered in plastic which is fine. I’ve had these for a long time so I am using these.
There’s also a little wedge here. One way you can lay on it is in the wedge, the newer ones have a bigger cut out here. I recommend laying on the neck one this way and then we have the low back one which looks a little different. The top is chiseled off here, so this is for your low back or your lumbar wedge.
Using the Spinal Wedge
Now, how do we use these? Patients always go, well what do I do? Well your goal is to get up to 10-20 minutes a day on these.
I had a patients recently, she said “it would hurt after 30 seconds, I had a lot of pain,” I said stop. Tomorrow go to a minute, so if you go 3,4,5 minutes and it starts to hurt stop, you’re good. The next day try to add a little bit more time.
Now, people who have numbness in an extremity like sciatica, carpal tunnel, I encourage them to do the wedges four to five times a day just for one to two minutes. The more frequency you have to decompress the spine, the discs, the nerve roots, the faster the healing and the better resolution we’re going to get of the issues that are going on with the spine.
So, let me show you how to do this. This one goes to the neck, this one goes to the low back. First things first, I would recommend we put this one here and lay back like that. Then put your neck; I recommend putting the next one down as far as you can. So we just lay on these things.
This one goes right about your hip, waist height, and lay there. Now, I always encourage people to leave their legs up when they first start. If you put your legs down it’s going to me more of an intense stretch.
Also, if you think about this, if you do ab exercises and you don’t have a wedge your spine is going to be flat and so you’re strengthening a flattened spine which is not ideal for strength. This way, when you do ab workouts you actually have the curve in there, so something else to consider.
There are different movements you can do on these to help mobilize your spine. You can go side to side with your legs, you have got to go gently though. When you first get up, that’s a little hard to do on the bench but when you’re on your bed I would recommend taking them out really slowly, don’t do any sudden movements because you really just stretched a bunch of soft tissue.
Then I would recommend getting up very slow on your side. Push yourself up so that you don’t exacerbate anything because you’re really making big changes when you’re using the wedges.
Summary
So, if you ever have any questions feel free to ask me in the office. I recommend doing this everyday especially when you’re in a lot of pain.
A lot of patients, I’ll ask, hey have you been wedging and they’re like, no. When they flare up the pain motivates them to get their wedges out. The wedges will last you along time as long as your dog doesn’t get a hold of them and chew them apart.
I’ve had these blue ones for over 15 years. My wife wrote a little note on the side here, it says love you honey, when we first got married, so I’ve had these almost 15 years. They last forever and they are very inexpensive, under $40 bucks for the set. So you can do decompression.
We can mail them to you or if you’re in the office we can give them to you in the office.
So if you have any questions, feel free to call me, feel free to email me drtroy@zenapticchiropractic or you can call and get a consultation with us (360) 260-6903.
Thanks for listening, make sure you do your wedging!
