There is a tendency to believe that injury means stop moving. This keeps coming up in the office lately. I have observed that patients will typically default to rest or immobilization of an injured body part.
I understand why. For many decades, this model of avoiding all motion and resting an injury as much as possible has been widely practiced and supported. To be fair, context is everything
It can make sense that rest and bracing are necessary for the healing journey, especially if the damage to the area is severe and/or the injured area is very unstable. A broken arm clearly needs to be put in a cast and kept immobilized for a period of time. Thankfully this isn’t most of us most of the time. For the rest of us, “controlled movement” or any type of movement is better for healing than doing nothing. A new study (see below), has examined an immobilized joint vs a non-immobilized joint on the other side of the body in rabbits.
As it turns out, the immobilized joint is missing its molecular and cellular markers for health, compared to the non-immobilized joint.
The moral of the story: the body is a motion machine. Almost every type of injury will heal faster and better with movement.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1137613/
So get out there, be active ,and enjoy the beautiful weather, And manage any new injuries with a proper assessment and with continued ongoing movement.
In good health,
Dr Craig