hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you how to use a TENS EMS
unit for knee pain. so let's get started.
So the folks at Healthmate Forever sent me their T12AB TENS EMS unit. they have a
whole bunch of different units, wire, Wireless, and so make sure and check them
out by clicking the link up there. so for the knee, I like to put a roll underneath
just so you can do some exercises with it. so with the electrical muscle
stimulation, you can do a short arc quad. so that's why I like having the roll
underneath. you don't have to use the roll, you can just put it straight out
and still get a good contraction, but I do like having it there because I feel
like you can get a little better contraction. so with the TENS, it's
different than the EMS how you would set it up, so I'm gonna start off with the
TENS. TENS is for pain mainly and TENS just stands for a transcutaneous
electrical nerve stimulation. and that basically means the nerves on the top,
the surface. so this isn't a muscle contraction, you don't want to get or see
a muscle contraction. sometimes you'll see a little quivering with ten's, but if
you're actually getting a contraction, you're not quite doing it right because
this is to get the pain to go down. this isn't to get the muscle to contract. and
so basically in theory what it does is the vibration that you're feeling
through the tens unit follow the same pathway as a pain pathway, and kind of
cancels it out. so it's a great way to kind of get some of that pain down to be
able to do stretches and exercises that you need to get better. so for the knee
what you want to do is you have four electrodes, which is two channels. and so
they're going to cross each other like an X. so let's say I'm just having
general knee pain kind of around the kneecap or you know maybe a little bit
lower on that patellar tendon. I want to like encircle and compass that area. so
as you can see here there's two different channels, and each channel has
two electrodes. you want them to do the crossing. so if I'm to put it on my knee,
I want this channel to be across from each other. so not like this, but have one
on the opposite side of the other and then the other channel is going to cross
it. so you want to make that X. it makes a difference. if it's just here and here,
you're just going to get them talking to each other that way, and you're not
really getting that pain area in there. so again if the pain's here, you want to
make sure that it crosses at that spot. so I'm gonna put the the electrodes
crossing each other. it doesn't have to be in an exact spot for the tens.
sometimes you might want to even move it around a little bit once it gets started,
and that's fine. you can do that. so I'm just going to kind of cross it here, and
then I'm going to take the other channel and cross it as well. and so you can see
I haven't turned the unit on yet. you can, but I usually kind of get everything set
up before I turn the unit on. you don't have to it's not going to start right
away or anything, but that's just usually what I do. I get everything nice and set
up first. so again as you can see here, this channel is crossing, and this
channel is crossing. so you want to make that X. again that's really important. so
once you get that set up with the tens depending on what unit you have, if it's
a tens / ems unit, usually it has a bunch of different settings here. so for this
particular unit, the ten and eleven setting are the ones that are actually
for the muscle stimulation and the other ones are for the tens. so the lower
numbers are for the tens. there are different settings, there are different
feelings. some feel like a little pinpricking you, some kind of feels
like a massage, some revs up and goes down. people ask me
all the time which settings should I use. to be honest, with the tens it really is
just your comfort level. this is designed to decrease the pain, so if you like one
better than four, it's really not going to make a whole lot of difference in the
long run of "I should be using the four because it does this." some people will
tell you that the different frequencies do different things, but I don't really
think that's true because you're just trying to decrease the pain, and you're
trying to feel better. so if you like one better than the other, that's what you
want to do. so what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to start off with the first
one here, and you can set your time so it's automatic, and
it'll automatically cutoff, which is really cool too. and then you can just start. it has the a
and the B Channel, and I'm just doing the a channel right now, and then so I'm just
gonna start. really you want to start slowly, don't just start cranking it up
even if you don't feel anything. this is just on setting one and I'm already
feeling something. I feel it even kind of kind of going down into my foot a
little bit, and that's just because the surface nerves are all connected. so this
is comfortable. this isn't painful. if it's hurting, if you're doing like this,
it's too much. it's not about how high you can go. it's about how good it feels for
you. so it should be strong, but comfortable. that's what you really
really want. so you can see here mine's just on one right now, there's no muscle
contraction. there shouldn't be a muscle contraction. I'm going to try and take it
up so you can see a little bit of a contraction, and just show you. that's
probably too much because again if you're getting that muscle contraction
you're fatiguing out the muscle and that's not the goal of the tens. so I'm
just going to kind of start taking it up a little bit more, and so you can kind of
see now I don't know if you can see the inner one because it's kind of about my
VMO, it's making a little bit of a contraction. you can see my foot, I'm not
doing that voluntarily. that's that's the unit doing it, so probably what's
happening is this is just over my nerve here on the fibula, and that's the
peroneal nerve. and so it just goes down that leg, and so that's what it's doing.
It's just activate that, so what I might do is if I'm getting some of that, I would
just pause it, and then just move this electrode over a little bit. so you can
definitely do that as well. and so get it off the nerve, start it up again and you
can see it's not moving like it was. but if I were to keep taking it up to go
stronger, now you can see that I'm starting to get more muscle contractions.
I'm getting it on the inside that VMO over there. that's not what you want.
again that's not what you want for the TENS. so I would definitely take it down, or
again I would kind of move those electrodes around a little bit to get a
better placement. so that's just kind of how you would use the TENS, and that's
again making sure that those muscles don't contract. now you can just use one
channel with two electrodes, and use the tens unit. you don't have to use
all four. sometimes people feel like that's a lot, so I'm gonna go ahead and
pause this, and just kind of show you I'm gonna go ahead and just take the whole
thing away here. and so with this one, if you want to get maybe a more specific
area, like let's say the pain is on your patellar tendon down there, and it's not
really your knee hurting at all, but it's that patella patellar tendon. so if you
want to get a specific spot, then I usually say just use one channel or the
two electrodes. so if you're hurting right here, if you're having some pretty
significant pain, I would get the electrodes a little bit closer cuz
that's just gonna make it more intense. and then just put it right there like
that. so again then you just can start it back up, and do the same thing.
so it might not be as strong, you might have to then go a little bit higher. so
I'm on the one, and I can just barely feel it because it's just that one
channel, so then I would just kind of take it up a little bit and so that is
three for me right there. so you still see there's no muscle contraction, but
I'm getting a nice comfortable feeling and that's what I would want. that's
going to hopefully help take that pain away. so if you want to do an EMS or the
electrical muscle stimulation for the knee pain, I would usually say go for the
quads or the VMO because if you're trying to strengthen that muscle if it's
really weak, that's gonna help with knee pain too. you can do the tens and the EMS
on your calf muscles, you can move on your hamstrings, you can do it on your
anterior tibialis, all those muscles have to do with the knee because these
muscles are crossing and coming into that joint. but for me I would say the
quads probably the biggest one because it's usually a tracking issue of that
patella or that kneecap. so if you have something like patella femoral pain,
syndrome, chondromalacia where it's not tracking properly, that's going to cause
knee pain. and so getting some strength in there is gonna help with that. so if
you're in the clinic and you probably want to have this try it out buy a
physical therapist first, you don't want to be using a TENS or an EMS until you
talk to your healthcare professional because sometimes you're not supposed to
do it. there's certain things if you have you're not supposed to be using these
units especially the electrical muscle stimulation where you're actually getting that
contraction. so make sure you check with your healthcare professional that it's
okay. so for this one, I'm gonna try and get
that specific muscle belly. so I'm just going to use two electrodes again. so I
like to kind of cross it if you're in the clinic, I was going back to say a lot
of times they'll use a probe to find exactly where those trigger points are
to get the muscle contraction. you don't always have to be exact,
again what I like is you can kind of move the electrodes as you go. so if you
do a placement, I'm just kind of crossing to get that whole quad muscle, but if you
don't feel like it's working, you can kind of move it as you go. so again for
this unit, and make sure you're reading the directions the ten and the eleven
are the muscle actual stimulation, so I'm going to go on two, and the cool thing
about this is it it shows weight so to me you know if you're lifting weights
you're kind of strengthening the muscles, so that's that's a nice way to kind of
show that you're doing that. so I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna go over to the ten
here, and so just starting off, make sure you're just going to kind of feel. I'm
feeling it but it's not doing a contraction yet, so as I go with
electrical muscle stimulation you want it to be strong. so I always say go as
high as you can tolerate, and sometimes you know that might not be a whole lot.
for people sometimes it's a lot, so I'm starting to get the contractor you can
see that my legs starting to pull a little bit, and starting to get a little
quiver, and then I'm just going to go a little bit more, and once I get that
contraction you can see right there that big contraction. if you can tolerate this
is really strong, go up one more because you want it, you want this to be
uncomfortable, you're trying to strengthen this muscle, and so when I go
up and I give this contraction, if you want to do an exercise with it
then you're doing the exercise as you feel it. so if this is contracting that
quad as is contracting, I want to kick that leg up, and do it, and so that's how
I'm just, I'm not even holding it, so you know just drop back down. so it's helping
me do the work. so if you're at a point where your muscle you, that's that's
really weak, and you can't do it, this will help activate that muscle
so you can do it. so that's just a way to do it. so for this, sum, it you'll have
different protocols. some people say do 10 minutes worth. I say you know don't do
quite that much because it's really going to make those muscles tired. I
would just try a couple of minutes in the beginning, and see how it feels, and
then let that muscle recover and relax. because if you're not giving it time to
recover, you're gonna be really really sore and painful. so make sure and talk
with your physical therapist to get a good protocol for this because you can
overdo it because it is really contracting that muscle. so if you're
interested in purchasing one of the tens EMS units from Healthmate Forever, make
sure and click on the link up there, and don't forget to subscribe by clicking
down there. and remember, be safe (don't go to high), have fun, and I hope you feel better
better soon.
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