4 ms·

Word of advice, as someone who's had lots, and I mean lots, of injuries: past the initial cooling down of the injured part of your body, rest is not going to he

• linkregister 2y ago
  Some nuance: the right kind of stretching and working out will heal the injury. The optimal way to do this is to work with a physical or occupational therapist to develop the right set of exercises for the issue. Adherence to the exercise plan is essential to recovery. I have learned this the hard way as a procrastinator. Indeed, rest alone will most likely result in a chronic issue that one can live with. But these injuries can be remedied even years later with the right physical therapy— it is rarely too late to make a change. Example: nerve damage requires some unintuitive solutions that are difficult to isolate on YouTube or other resources (due to high volumes of quackery).
  • eek2121 2y ago
    THAT depends on the injury. Some can’t be healed. That being said, new treatments are being discovered all the time. I suffered from a TBI and I am part of a study. The medication I am on is 4 decades old, but it helps folks with TBIs, long COVID, ME/CFS, etc. with an 85% success rate. It is helping me as well. My working and long term memory have improved along some other stuff as well. That being said, I feel bad for people with chronic pain. A sibling had chronic pain for decades, got accused of being lazy, etc. After seeing dozens of doctors spanning those decades, they finally found the cause and surgery fixed it. For every success like that, there are hundreds more that never see relief.
    • eek2121 2y ago
      Sorry for the redundantly redundant stuff, it is unrelated to my TBI and is mostly sleepiness, 2 glasses of wine, and a nasty pulled muscle. I would edit, but i won’t because it is kind of funny! :D
    • sriacha 2y ago
      Curious, medication do you use with such a high success rate?
    • cfslooking 2y ago
      Can you mention what the study and medication are called? I have a TBI and CFS that has made me unable to work and am always trying new leads. Thank you!
  • nprateem 2y ago
    My RSI only healed once I ignored the lightweight exercises my physio gave me and hit the gym again for full body workouts.
    • kalaksi 2y ago
      Then you probably could have increased the intensity faster and your physio would have agreed. For me, the balance is delicate and it's easy to overdo exercising which can set the healing back
      • nprateem 2y ago
        Well yeah obviously. Only they didn't suggest that.
        • Smithalicious 2y ago
          Why did you decide that wholesale ignoring your therapist was preferable to voicing your thoughts?
          • freedomben 2y ago
            Preface: This will read as though I'm making a lot of assumptions about parent's beliefs/views. I am not. They may or may not share the views I argue against here. This is intended for a general audience where I do routinely here these views articulated. I'm not GP but did the same thing (ignoring my therapist's specific plan) because: 1. Every time I see him it costs me hundreds of dollars, and if we made any changes to the routine he will want at least 6 more visits. 2. When I asked about increasing the weight over time, he told not without first coming to another appointment because it would be unsafe. He also would only allow small increases at a time. Surely only for safety purposes, definitely certainly not in any way influenced or incentivized by revenue... 3. I'm not an idiot, and this is not rocket science. I know my body pretty well on account of living in it and with it and having been engaged in intense physical activity off and on my entire life. 4. Some of the exercises he gave me were wrong for me anyway. I have torticollis (something that he missed entirely despite me telling him about it at the time, though I didn't yet know the technical term for it) which necessitates some changes to the routine. I think it's important as patients not to listen to the people who say, "You're not an expert. Shut up and listen to the experts." or "Are you a doctor? Then stop using your brain immediately and cease all functions of rationality and accept what you're being told." I've known plenty of experts (including myself in my own field) and being an expert and/or credentialed doesn't magically make you omniscient. Some of the most interesting and fierce debates happen between two people who are equally credentialed, and both of them can't be right. It's your body and your life. You have insights into it that nobody else does. Be humble, know what you know and try to know what you don't know. Treat your doctor like an incredibly wise and experienced friend and give their opinion heavy weight - they are most likely correct. But that doesn't mean they are infallible. Sometimes they don't have enough information on your issue, sometimes it's just not something they have a lot of experience with, and sometimes they are just plain wrong. It turns out that a human with a credential is still a human. Forgetting that and treating them as god-like all-knowing machines won't make them such. You still have to engage your own mind, and sometimes that will lead you to finding a new doctor or in some cases just dealing with stuff yourself[1]. [1] I would hope it goes without saying, but in this current environment I think it bears explicit stating: Just because doctors are fallible and sometimes wrong does not mean whatever quack on the internet is right. There is some great information on the internet and some real quality people producing content. There is also a mountain of bad content that at best will waste your time and money and at worst could hurt you. I am in no way advocating that you shouldn't see a doctor or trained professional. You should do that. Just don't turn off your own ability to think when doing so. I do advocate "do your own research" (a phrase that has unfortunatley come to mean more than its face value, which is unfortunate) but step one or two of that research should (in most cases) be to ask a doctor!
• bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > past the initial cooling down of the injured part of your body, rest is not going to heal shit Rest is not for "healing" it is to avoid re-injuring something already weakened by an injury This is potentially very reckless advice
  • KevinGlass 2y ago
    Sure, but there are already many many people partially or fully disabled by over resting after an injury. The parent comment was hardly calling for running marathons right after a car accident.
  • mikemcquaid 2y ago
    I know a lot of physiotherapists/physical therapists. They all talk about excessive rest causing more issues than not enough rest. It’s potentially reckless to rest excessively, it just doesn’t feel that way.
  • sjamaan 2y ago
    It's only reckless if you go full force right away. Test the waters with a light load to get the blood flow going, then increase weight as you feel the area is healing/getting stronger. Stop adding load or deload when it starts to hurt.
• BigFnTelly 2y ago
  this is inline with what Dr. Stuart McGill (https://uwaterloo.ca/kinesiology-health-sciences/people-profiles/stuart-mcgill https://uwaterloo.ca/kinesiology-health-sciences/people-prof...) studied. He's an influential kinesiologist (disclaimer: I have no expertise in this matter). The 'McGill Big 3' is comprised of 3 core-strengthening exercises that rely on muscular contraction (e.g. planking) over muscular extension (e.g. sit ups, twists). More on that here: https://squatuniversity.com/2018/06/21/the-mcgill-big-3-for-core-stability/ https://squatuniversity.com/2018/06/21/the-mcgill-big-3-for-...
• BubbleRings 2y ago
  I think a lot of people get in trouble with pain from pull-ups. I love the exercise, but I no longer just walk up to the bar when I am in the mood. I first do a set or two on some resistance bands I attached to a ceiling, to warm up. They give about 35 pounds of resistance. I weigh over 200 pounds. I would never walk up to a weight bar and military press 200 pounds cold. I regret that I used to walk up to a pull up bar and pull down with 200 pounds of force cold, I think it caused me shoulder trouble that was made worse by long days of intense keyboard/mouse work, and the caffeine in one or two cups of coffee per day.
• dxuh 2y ago
  I've had issues with tennis elbow for pretty much a year now. I didn't rest at all in the beginning and simply toned down the intensity of my exercise. But gradually it became worse, until I had no choice but to take a break. First just a week, but it came back a couple weeks later, then two weeks, then a month and so on. Now I took an extended break of a couple of months. While resting might not be the answer (and I agree very often rest is the opposite of what you need), exercise certainly isn't always the answer either. If things were as easy as you think, everyone would already share your opinion. Unfortunately I also have a very bad knee (osteoarthritis) and on some days I cannot walk from one room to the next without clutching every solid piece of furniture around me. Just recently, after years, I learned that it was movement that helped me most in such states. Of course I can barely walk and walking makes it noticably worse, but biking actually helps me quite a bit and rapidly improves my mobility and general well-being. But you kind of have to have the insight that moving is what you need, when you can barely move at all - and only certain kinds of movements too! These issues are as complicated as anything else. Sometimes rest is necessary and sometimes certain movements are most beneficial. It's difficult to know. And rest is not a bad default, because while it might not help you, it rarely hurts you much worse. Training the wrong muscle when it shouldn't be trained can do some damage you might regret dearly for a long time.
• Y_Y 2y ago
  > Take it from this old gym rat, I've spent my entire adult life in the gym, and a program like this one can do more harm than good. Well that's not exactly what was written above but I read it in the same way. Dear reader, if you want my advice instead; the internet advice of random posters is great for finding new ideas but little else. I happen to have a glut of experience with injury, recovery and pain too. Whether or not a particular injury needs rest or exercise depends on very many factors and expert physicians will differ.