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More often than not, patients mistake their injuries as nothing more than a pulled muscle or something “out” in their back and undergo aggressive stretching and exercise routines to make their pain go away.
How do I know it didn’t work?
The person is standing in my office 2 weeks later still in pain, and oftentimes worse than when they first hurt themselves.
So when is stretching appropriate and when is it not?
In my opinion, a pulled muscle would require almost no treatment at all, and as a person continues to be active, they will actually feel better until they stop being active. At that time they might notice stiffness that again reduces with activity.
Within a day or so and a decent night’s sleep they will feel much better and have very little, if any, attention on their injury.
After the person is no longer experiencing pain or symptoms, if they enjoyed stretching prior to the injury, they can resume light stretches and in those postures or attitudes that mimic their typical daily motions- putting your leg around your neck and jumping up and down is probably not a typical daily motion.
This would include resuming exercise- slowly and on a gradient scale go through the motions of your exercise and see how you survive. If so, add some weight, if not, you still need to heal and recover.
I would recommend using a foam roll or stick on the injured area instead, and do so lightly rather than doing conventional stretches.
There really would be no need to continue stretching if you were feeling back to normal.
If you do stretch following an injury the big question is,
“IS IT WORKING?”
If not, DO NOT STRETCH OR CONTINUE EXERCISING!!!!!!!!!!
Basically, STOP HARMING YOURSELF!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s a few problems:
- Most people injure themselves worse than they give themselves credit for,
- Most injuries are ligamentous, meaning the ligaments which connect bone to bone,
- When stretched, a torn muscle and a tight muscle feel the same to the person stretching
Most injuries are to the collagen fibers that are the building blocks of ligaments, bone, cartilage and almost every other tissue in the body, and so when the collagen is damaged, this causes an inflammatory response that needs to repair the damaged tissue. This inflammation is the source of pain.
This can take several weeks or months to heal, and this depends on the extent of injury.
Here’s the question, how can stretching or exercising torn and damaged tissue make it feel better, let alone help it to heal and recover?
In fact, ligaments do not like to be stretched at all!
That’s why if the stretching works, pain goes away and you are back at it, it wasn’t a collagen/ligament injury.
If the stretching doesn’t work and you feel worse, or like you need to keep stretching, you are only further damaging the injured collagen tissue and ligaments.
So what should you do to help yourself?
Avoid stretching and exercising, avoid low sitting like in sofas, recliners, or propping up in bed to read, computerize or watch T.V., ice the injured area for 20 minutes every hour to hour and a half, and take many short walks- like 4 or 5 houses down the street and back. You might also like glute squeezes, where you squeeze your butt muscles for 10 seconds, 10 times throughout the day.
If you absolutely have to stretch, lightly use a foam roll, or stick and then short walk.
If you still have questions about self care you can always come to the Pros at Paragon Chiropractic, or give us a call, and we’ll show you what to do to help yourself.
Take Care,
Dr. Dave
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