Posts Tagged ‘therapy aids healing’
Method of Therapy Aids Healing
The therapy most often taught to deal with acute injury uses the acronym RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. While it is important to give an injured body part rest, it is equally important to not rest it too much. The R in RICE should stand for Range of Motion, according to many sports therapists. In fact, the developer and main teacher of Soft Tissue Release, Stuart Taws, uses the acronym MICE (Movement, Ice, Compression, and Elevation) for his method of therapy.
Almost any person that hears the word “surgery” automatically assumes that bed rest will be next. This is due to the fact that almost all hospitals enforced bed rest after surgery for many years. Because of resting too long, patients had big adhesions that took a long time to heal.
Patients now recover more quickly, since they are encouraged to utilize mobility opportunities following a surgery procedure. In fact, a patient who has had knee surgery will be put into a device that flexes and extends the knee on a continuous basis to keep adhesions from forming.
Adhesions, resulting in an inhibition of normal range of motion, can occur if an area is given too much rest after an injury. The client may accept the reduced range of motion as normal. It is common to not notice any difference at all. This is one of the reasons that people regularly re-injure an area that was formerly injured.
To know how and how much to move an injured area, you need to know how the body responds to injuries and about the inflammatory process’s different stages.
The beginning stage of inflammation is the reactive or acute stage. Redness and swelling will occur because of vascular changes during this stage and are likely to extend over a three to four day time-period.
In this stage, range of movement is decreased due to swelling, as well as muscle spasms and intentionally or unintentionally guarding the area to prevent further injury and pain. To help reduce the swelling during this stage lymphatic massage is suggested. After the muscle spasm has been reduced, gentle movement may be conducted.
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