The Acute Injury Management
Action taken right after an injury is very crucial, as it will decide the prognosis of the injury. Right action will give you relief but any mistake can make the condition much worse. The following advice could literally save your life, so take some time to memorize it and you'll know what to do the next time you get injured.
Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation
Rest will assist you in giving your body the best opportunity of healing and avoid any excessive inflammation that may cause further damage.
Reducing the amount of load and motion in the affected area is referred to as rest. When you're in injury, the worst thing you can do is try to push through it, which may quickly convert an easily curable irritation into something that could take months of rehabilitation.
Ice refers to the use of an ice pack or even a bag of frozen vegetables to cool the affected area. This relieves part of the pain while also constricting the surrounding blood vessels, which can lessen inflammation without completely removing it. What you should not do is apply heat to a fresh injury. Heat can assist decrease post-exercise soreness, but it will increase blood flow to an injured location and hence the inflammatory response, exacerbating symptoms like pain and edema.
Compression is the application of external pressure to the affected area through the use of a compression bandage or sports tape. This has a lot of advantages, including lowering swelling, restricting movement, and giving support, allowing your body to lay down effective early scar tissue and begin the healing process.
Elevation refers to keeping the affected area elevated above the level of your heart. Again, this helps to reduce excess blood flow and so edema and inflammation without completely removing them.
Avoid anti-inflammatory medications for 48 hours after an injury.
The body's natural healing response to cell injury is inflammation. Unpleasant side effects are caused by increased blood flow, which contains white blood cells to clear up any damage as well as other chemical mediators to drive the formation of new healthy tissue.
While an excessive or prolonged inflammatory response can inhibit healing or create more damage, it is a vital aspect of injury recovery. That's why you should keep your inflammatory response doing its job for the first 48 hours only after that you can have anti-inflammatory medications.
Anti-inflammatories should be avoided shortly after an acute injury, regardless of how irritating the affected area feels. That is why the ice, compression, and elevation are so important: they reduce inflammation but do not eliminate it, allowing the immune system to do its job without going overboard.
But You Can Take Painkillers
Over-the-counter analgesics, on the other hand, such as paracetamol, are usually safe to take after an accident since they block the pain signal from the damaged location to the brain without impairing the healing process.
Pain medication makes the healing period more bearable, and it can also be crucial to the rehabilitation process by allowing the reintroduction of movement that would otherwise be too painful to tolerate.
For some, alcohol is a common alternative pain reliever and part of post-sport rituals or celebrations. Alcohol is an analgesic, but it is also a vasodilator, meaning it increases blood flow. The temporary relief provided by a few beers after a game may appear to be worthwhile, but you'll be significantly worse off the next day.
Deep massage should also avoid within the first 48-72 hours following an accident since it causes additional blood and inflammatory chemicals to flow to the wounded location.
See a Physiotherapist As Soon As Possible
Many minor injuries, if not treated properly, can have long-term consequences for your movement or the health of the affected area. While the above methods may be sufficient for minor injuries, any injury that is more severe, especially one involving a joint, must be carefully maintained to avoid compensatory movement patterns, muscle imbalance, and/or recurrent injury.
We emphasize "as soon as feasible" since early assessment means early action, which can result in faster injury resolution. Waiting weeks or months after an injury can translate into weeks or months of therapy.