This week I found myself explaining to a client how, what had started out as an easy to clear up injury, had become a lengthy and difficult nightmare of compensation on top of compensation on top of compensation. "Layers of an onion" as we often phrase it.
In particular, I explained that had it been treated much earlier those layers would never have built up. This is a conversation we have at The Reinge Clinic far too often. So, how do you know when you need to seek help with a problem, well that's simple, so simple in fact this post is going to be wonderfully short. 🤗
If you experience a problem that lasts for more than a week.... seek help! Thats it, its that simple!
I could just end the post here, but let me explain :🤔
Basically a simple muscular injury (a strain) will clear up within a week because the muscle has an excellent blood supply. Possibly in rare cases this may take up to two weeks.
Therefore, anything that persists for longer needs help. You are now, most likely, looking at an actual tear of muscle, tendon, ligament, or most commonly a bio-mechanical imbalance. Whichever it is, it will last three, four, five weeks, all the time you are sure its not as bad as it was, Two, three four months go by, sometimes even years, until eventually you accept it may need help. In the meantime your body has adapted to the problem by using other muscles to do the job of the injured muscle. As these muscles are not designed for the job of the previous muscle, they get tired quickly and another muscle is found to assist. Can you see how we are building up our "layers of the onion". This continues until your body finally says enough is enough and breaks. Then we have to work back through these layers to get back to the root cause of the problem. This takes time and therefore costs you more in the long run, than getting it assessed early on.
The body is extremely clever in many ways, but its ability to heal significant soft tissue injury is alarmingly poor. This is largely due to its inability to replace soft tissue with new soft tissue. Instead the body produces a 'general adhesive' .....scar tissue. Scar tissue is weak, inflexible and is layered down in a random pattern that allows 'adhesion' in any direction, rather than following the correct line of force for a given soft tissue . As a repair system it's................what's the term I am looking for?......Ah, yes!..........................Rubbish 🙄!
As human beings however, we have fathomed out how our bodies work and therefore we can use professions such as ours to improve the way your body heals. Something lions, tigers, birds, fish or indeed any other creature have yet to do 😎.
So what do we do in first week or two in the case of suddenly noticing pain? Well let me refer you to the first blog on this website, which is still there. 'To ice or not to ice"
It's as simple as that, pain for more than a week = be concerned, pain for two weeks= please seek help....... early.
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