With sports comes strength, skills, and usually an overall healthier lifestyle. I believe it is important to have a physical outlet to progress ones skills and have the ability to work at multiple heart zones for different durations. This is from what I have learned over the years as a cyclist focusing on long term performance and how to improve it. Now I enjoy bringing that perspective to all of my activities. Recently I have been experimenting with large wheel dirt skateboarding and it takes a good bit of effort to keep that thing rolling. Long story short, I went down and ended up putting a crack in my distal radius, right at the end near by my wrist and bruised my palm area. My shoulder took most the impact so I would hate to see how it turned out if I was full blown hands out. Maybe I would have done a cart wheel and avoided it all together? Maybe not. Regardless, here we are 19 days after the fall and I am typing away and it is feeling pretty good, defiantly on the road to recovery. So I just wanted to leave a record of how I personally handle things like this, and not just wrist, I will be talking about severe sprains, strains, stiffness, aches, and over use injuries. Whether you are an athlete or need to be back at work asap, feeling good and pain free, this read will be able to help get you on a proper path to recovery.
Everything I will be going over I have incorporated into my life over years and have done to help with general recovery, longevity of life, or to aid in assisting better my type 1 diabetes. I am not a doctor and I would defiantly do your own research, everyone's body is different, but here is what I have found to help my personal body heal up and get me back on track and in some cases stronger than before the accident/injury. First things first, need to know what is wrong. Did you trip on the sidewalk, did you fall down a stair case, or did you case a 40ft jump? The moments directly after the incident are the most crucial. If it is only a mild sprain getting ice on it and immobilized ASAP is crucial to getting back at sport sooner than later. If you are unsure it is always a good idea to get x-rays, MRI, cat scan, whatever you need to know the inside of you is ok. Weird stuff can happen to our bodies, better safe than sorry. So for our case and my personal wrist case lets cover mild to severe sprains, and in my case a small crack to the bone. Lets be clear, the crack I am referring to is in a some what stable location and that is how I am not in a cast and able to just tend after it in a brace. Each hairline crack should be discussed with your doctor. On the other hand, if you are diagnosed with a mild to severe sprain let us continue on. Again, maybe this isn't a new injury, maybe an old one flaring up, this will still be beneficial. Everything I will be going over is more of a guide and outline. Later on in future blog posts I will dive into each of the topics deeper and the whos and whats about each of them.
Once we know we are a few weeks to a few months out from being back to normal we can figure out a game plan. The most important thing is to keep it immobilized and elevated if possible. By not allowing it to move you are aiding in the fact that you will diminish your chances of causing any further risk to already damaged ligaments, tendons, and muscles. The elevation helps if it is swollen mostly. Making it slightly harder for blood to flow up hill. Also allowing the "bad" blood a possible easier route to evacuate the bruised/swollen area and helping aid in pumping fresh oxygen full blood back to circulate fresh nutrients to the impacted area. At this point that may be all you can do in terms of direct application to harmed area. From the time it happened and even a year from now if it started to become tender, ice is oh so important. Especially the first few hours to days after initial impact. I like to apply ice for 15-30 minutes, not directly to my skin. I also enjoy submerging the entire harmed area in ice water. Icing is not only good for the fact that it helps reduce swelling. Simple science, things that are cold shrink and things that are warm expand. The next level of science behind ice baths are the fact that you are causing the area to experience "shock", and this sends the body into a flight or fight mode, it triggers the brain to send certain chemicals. Just like in weight lifting we apply a certain weight to a certain exercise and by doing so we have just cause tiny micro tears or "stress" to the impacted muscles. These will heal and that is how muscles get bigger. The same can happen for damaged muscles. You do not have the ability to move this joint or appendage, you must trigger this response a different way. Another way to trigger the brain to release helpful chemicals that will help aid in a sprained/strained injury is to intermittent fast or extended fasting if you are familiar with how to do so properly. If you are unfamiliar with fasting, at this point, just try to focus on getting some of the following foods/spices into your already existing diet. Feel free to Google or YouTube all about fasting, there is tons of info out there and I will be sure to have an entire post or multiple posts dedicated to fasting. So if you do know about fasting, try to get 16-20 hour daily fasts for the first few days to help trigger autophogy. The reason we shoot for that window it has the most "bang for your buck" basically, especially around the 18-24 hour mark. Usually once you have reached 16 hours your body begins to increase HGH (human growth hormone). In some cases five times more than your body would normally produce. The other main thing to focus on is cellular repair. Think about it this way, your brain gets a break from constantly digesting food or making more insulin it has a chance to do some house keeping. Getting rid of those old damaged cells. Not to mention, you may be stuck in bed or on the couch for a few days and this is a great way to ensure you are maintaining all the fitness you had prior by not putting on extra weight. The goal is to allow the body to rest even while you are awake. Giving it the time it needs to heal. It knows how to do it better than we do, so let it do its thing.
So with fasting comes proper nutrition. You simply cannot be not eating all day and then get all your calories in from a big mac and oreo's. It does not work like that. Maybe you didn't know what fasting was or you are against that, this next section is still important. Your body is already making nearly everything it need to repair your swollen knee or sprained ankle, but lets assist and maybe find some fun new foods in the process. One key aspect you need to do when fasting is to "break" that "fast" with some sort of nutritionally dense liquid. Something simple for the stomach to digest but still has something the body can feed on. Smoothies and juices are the best way to go about this. You can still implement this if you are not on a fasting schedule. When you wake up have a smoothie or juice for breakfast. Then introduce more solid foods throughout the day. Our bodies are on a circadian schedule and sometimes our metabolisms do not fully kick on until later in the afternoon. This is where learning and listening to how your body reacts to self experimenting becomes so important. Ensure you are eating things like salads, fruits, and veggies. Try to keep any carbs on the low side of the glycemic index. They will provide long, slow released energy to aid if you are fasting. Using things like coconut oil or MCT oil for cooking instead of "less clean" oils like butter or olive oil. Adding turmeric to foods or teas will be great for the joints as well. Not to mention teas in general! Lets be specific, herbal teas, they are great to help get more liquid in your body and have tons of anti-oxidants. Turmeric is a great spice to help reduce inflammation of all sorts. I personally have been a vegetarian coming up on 4 ish years now. After finding out how meat affected young healthy college athletes cholesterol readings, almost instantly, I denounced the benefits of meat from then on. We can dive into that later as well but for now, I discourage meat eating while healing up. All the proteins and minerals you can get from a slab of beef you can get from plants. The only thing you may want to look into supplementing is B-12, as it is not found in plants, anywhere. Being a vegg head, I sometimes feel I could be getting more protein, so one simple way I combat that is adding a few scoops to my fruit smoothies or using a scoop as my "creamer" in a cup of coffee. Now, be careful! If you are using a whey protein be sure to pre mix your protein before adding it to your hot coffee. You can however add soy and plant based(vegan) proteins directly to a hot liquid. Lets also talk about why to stay away from pre-packaged, highly altered, GMO, fake sugary foods. All of the chemicals that make up the calorie count do not hold any nutritional value. It is that simple. You are going to be fighting to get them out of your body instead of fighting to heal up your injury. To top it all off, simply staying hydrated with around a gallon of water a day will go a long way too, nearly 60% of our body is water! So there you have it, tighten up your eating window, make sure what you are eating is going to help heal you, stay hydrated, and of course have a delicious treat from time to time.
After you are out of the cast or have the ability to start to move it slightly, I find it is time to use a electronic stim or TENS machine to help with the next step. After numerous injuries and visits to chiropractors, I finally did some research and really enjoy the benefits of a stim machine. I think it freaks people out because you can cause your muscles to jump, but that is the goal at the end of the day. By "jumping" the muscles, we are activating them, causing them to pulse quickly in the fashion they would if they were to be under stress. This allows blood flow to happen and thus bring healthy new blood to the impacted area. These machines have become much more commonplace and can be found across the web. If you have never used one, check out your local chiropractor next time you have a muscle spasm or ache. I find a lot of mobility training has come from combining visits to physical therapists and chiropractors specializing in athletes. One thing I like to do personally, is ice for 15-30 minutes then place the stim machine on directly after. Just another layer of minimal stress the body will easily be able to conquer and help aid in a quicker recovery. So this next one is debatable in some parts. Some injuries call for heat treatments, and some say not to. I personally enjoy wrapping a heating pad around sore or damaged muscles. My favorite is if I can get it submerged in hot water heavily polluted with epsom salt. There is a lot of research into how salt water is such a beneficial factor in longevity and regeneration. Think about it, people by the beach usually are pretty relaxed and mobile into their later years. The epsom salt is usually infused with a scent and that of course helps further release stress and allow proper healing vibes to flow to the impacted area. If this is something you enjoy and find beneficial to your injured area, take it one step further and do the ice treatment, immediately submerge into a warm epsom salt soak to really add a small layer of stress and help the body trigger the proper chemicals to help heal the injury. This initial "shock" is common practice amongst fans in the ice bathing community. Regardless if you do ice then heat, one thing I like to do after I have soaked the injury for a bit, it is time to practice moving it around and stretching it out as much as you can endure. This is the loosest the muscles and tendons will be and good to move it now. Again this is promoting circulation and new blood flow which is ultimately how it will be healed.
Eventually, you will regain pain free movement and may think you are good to go. Remember to not get after it too early and to practice a few weeks of proper physical therapy or at the minimum do your proper research and perform these exercisers well past "feeling good". It is hard to tell sometimes if you are good for sport again from mild to severe sprains. You worry about injuring it again and then you are out even longer. I think injuries like these can teach one so much about patience and learning to listen to the body and how far to push it and when to recover. I will not be going into any workouts as each specific injury constitutes different exercises and rehab suiting workouts. So again be sure to get your doctor approval for weight bearing activities, go to a physical therapists, or at the very least a sports injury specific trainer with knowledge of progressive workout programs for injury specific clients. From there, do your home work. Think about how this happened, think about all the exercises you have been given. Can you make a quick ten minute routine you can do every day to help prevent it from happening again? Be proactive about your body and it will be sure to take care of you. It is not all about the large muscle groups. As we develop in our sport or as we simply age the small minute muscle fibers and ligaments we do not use as often become imbalanced compared to our large muscles and where there are imbalances there is a weak point for injury to occur.
The last large scale thing that can have a tremendous return on investment is activity level. Maybe you never really had some structure to distance and heart rate, well now may be a good time to help aid with over all longevity in your life. With heart monitors becoming so frequent in our lives, it is easy to keep track of now a days. Or maybe you are a marathon runner and the proceeding months will be hell! Take the opportunity to rest all of your body and especially the injured portions. If you are able to walk at the minimum and build up from there, I deeply encourage fresh outdoor air mixed with physical activity and moderate heart rate consistency. The idea here is simple, increase your heart rate, thus increasing blood flow and promoting new cells to flush out the old dead cells from said sustained injury. It may be hard and not possible at first but whenever it is possible to walk around be sure to do so. We will dive into some heavy heart rate info later on in their own posts as well.
One final thought I want to cover about a speedy recovery program is to be sure to take some sort of anti- inflammatory supplement. Maybe it is so bad they give you a prescription for the pain. With the numbers of people hooked on prescription drugs I really try to avoid it if I can. I personally turn to CBD, in any form. It can come in pills, tincture, creams, and even smokable flower. It is a great way to reduce stress and elevate pain. One other great use of a natural pain killer is Kratom tea. The "red" strain is the most potent and can be mixed in with teas or coffee. It has a very heavy soothing feeling and will leave you feeling weightless on the couch, perfect for recovery situation. Along with keeping the pain at a min, it is important to maintain 8,10,12, or however many hours of sleep your body needs. Maybe you can take time off work or maybe you're forced too. Don't stress too much, the money will be there, but you got to get better first. Taking these steps promptly will have a huge return in weeks to come. So if you are injured reading this, I wish you a speedy recovery. If you are well, I continue to wish you well and maybe try to incorporate some of these things into your life now to help prevent or assist when the time may be needed. Stay healthy everyone!