We all know that playing sports and exercising should be essential to staying healthy. These health-smart actions benefit your heart, lungs, joints, bones, and mind by releasing mood-enhancing endorphins. However, the downside is that physical activity can sometimes lead to injuries. Injuries are caused by various factors, including accidents, poor conditioning or training practices, not wearing the proper protective equipment or an inadequate warm-up. Some of the most frequent sports injuries include Achilles tendon injuries, sprains, strains, stress fractures, and knee injuries.
What is most important is that if an injury occurs, you know how to help expedite the healing and seek advice from a sports rehabilitation specialist.
Athlete’s First Aid Protocols
Sports injuries are usually pretty easy to diagnose because the athlete will typically know when something went awry. A physical examination should confirm this, but x-rays may also be ordered if the injury suspected could be more severe, like a fracture.
Most often, the injuries are less severe and are to the soft tissue, as in the case of tendonitis, strains, and sprains. With these types of injuries, the treatment can be one or a combination of the following protocols:
Raise it High and Compress
Typically forty-eight hours of rest with compression and elevation are the general prescription for a mild strain or sprain. Raising the injured joint or limb above the level of the heart, along with light compression by a medical bandage or sleeve, helps reduce inflammation and swelling.
Optimally a balance of activity and restoration of normal function are encouraged earlier to avoid harm from inactivity while avoiding a re-injury due to over enthusiastic comeback before the injury has healed properly.
Nature’s Best Anti-Inflammatory
Ice is nature’s best anti-inflammatory. It can help to reduce inflammation and increase the speed of the healing process. The best guideline is to use the ice for 20 minutes every hour. It is best to place the ice wrapped in a thin towel to protect the skin on the affected area for 20 minutes and then remove it to let the area return to a normal temperature. This action will act as a natural pump to reduce inflammation.
What Should I Do About Pain Relief?
According to recent research, certain nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs should be limited as they may retard the body’s natural healing process, causing a more extended recovery period than necessary. Therefore, if you use anti-inflammatory medication, use it sparingly and restrict activities, as the medication will allow your body to feel you are no longer in pain and no longer injured.
Sports Rehabilitation Is So Much More
Sports rehabilitation treatments can help with certain types of injuries, lowering pain levels and speeding recovery. Chiropractors and their teams are trained musculoskeletal experts and work with their teams to provide the best sports rehabilitation programs.
We’re On Your Team!
Our expert team is trained and licensed medical professionals who work with physicians and other healthcare providers to evaluate and manage musculoskeletal injuries. A huge bonus is that our team will not only rehabilitate your injuries back to active health status but work to revitalize the areas to a better condition than when you arrived.
Our Sports Motto: Be prepared 1000% by being the 1% who have the health team behind them to help get them there!
For Your Health,
Dr. Steven M. Gillis
