Massage For Health 3: Massage and Injury Recovery
Massage For Health 3: Massage and Injury Recovery
One of the things I see clients for most is injury recovery.
Whether it happened earlier in the week or years ago; injuries to muscles, ligaments and tendons can cause a serious drop in your ability to perform tasks or maintain your daily routine without pain. No one wants to suffer the tight feeling, dull achy pain that comes with muscle strain or the sharp sting of overworking hurt muscles, ligaments or tendons. While they may be an inevitable part of being a human, they do not have to linger or cause more pain when you try to resume normal life after an injury.
What Can Help?
The best treatment is prevention, but that's not always a guarantee; so when you do get injured make sure to follow your doctors orders and do not push yourself too soon. Some of the most effective ways to help your body recover after an injury are: giving it enough time to heal, stretching the injured area carefully, using cryotherapy, eating a healthy diet, and getting a massage or physical therapy.
Healing Time
One of the worst mistakes people make with muscle and soft tissue injuries is not giving the body enough time to heal after the injury occurred. No one wants to take time off their normal routine and exercise regimen but when you have injured soft tissues you absolutely must take the time to let it rest and recover or you will cause further injury. Depending on the severity of the tear healing time varies from one or two weeks for a minor injury to a month or more for serious injuries. During the early part of healing (RICE method): resting, compression, ice and elevating the affected area are the activities you should stick to. Gently stretching the muscles to promote blood flow can be added after the first couple of days . Later into the healing process: massage, gentle stretching and cryotherapy that involves heat and ice can be added back in.
Stretching The Area
Adding stretching either by yourself or under the supervision of a massage therapist, chiropractor or physical therapist will help an injured area heal faster if done correctly. If done too soon or incorrectly it will cause further damage and lengthen the time proper healing takes. After the first 48 hours the area can be flexed and mobilized in a gentle and careful way paying close attention to pain levels. It should not hurt more ever during the recovery period, if it does hurt more stop the activities you were doing and return to the healing time protocol (RICE). If gentle stretching does not cause more pain, continue to use gentle stretches for a few more days before stepping up the stretches every few days until normal range of motion can be reached without causing pain. If at any point pain increases during this phase of increasing movements then return to the RICE protocol and start again. The most important thing is to listen to your body and not push it too hard so it can recover well.
Cryotherapy
One of the best ways to help your body heal after injury is Cryotherapy. Cryotherapy is the use of cold temperatures in a therapeutic way. In the beginning parts of injury healing; called the acute phase, only ice is suggested to be used therapeutically. One should ice the afflicted area for fifteen to twenty minutes allowing it to become numb before removing the ice for a while and then returning the ice to the area several times a day. After this acute injury time period comes the chronic injury time frame where alternating ice and heat has proven most helpful. Commonly, it is fifteen minutes ice followed by fifteen minutes of heat and back again for up to an hour that is used during this later phase to promote healing. Ice is first and most helpful because it act like a traffic cop. Your body sends an overflow of blood to injured areas so the cells can begin to repair the area, but only so many cells can fit in the veins at a time (especially if they were affected along with the muscles or tendons) so ice slows all the cells down and allows them to travel a few at a time to the injured area instead of all at once causing a traffic jam and reducing the effectiveness of the healing process. Heat brings more cells to the area so is more helpful after the veins and tissues have healed a little more and can take more cells coming in at a time, but ice is still needed to help regulate this inflow because tissue is still damaged.
Eating Healthy
Eating healthy gives your body the nutrients it needs to heal and the strength to heal itself as well. Overall, eating a well balanced and healthy diet helps your body operate at optimum efficiency and working well helps it heal faster and better. Getting a good amount of protein while working out is necessary to prevent injury and the amount needed is based both on activity and energy expended. The first 48 hours can require up to 20 percent more calories depending on the injury type and whether or not surgery was required to treat it. After that focusing on feeding the healing process is most important and one needs to consume more antioxidant rich foods to lessen inflammation such as healthy fats and fruits and veggies, as well as protein rich foods to feed muscle regrowth.
Massage and Physical Therapy
The three phases of muscle regeneration are as follows: destruction phase with initial inflammatory response (first 2-4 days), regeneration phase (days 4-around a month after) with activation of satellite cells and remodeling phase which matures regenerated muscle fibers (ongoing process for quite a while after injury "done healing"). The goal for massage and physical therapy is to come in during the rebuilding phase and encourage the growth to go faster and be more effective. This is considered mechanical stimulation and it has shown to help the body regulate its healing processes and boost the body's ability to build more functional connective tissues after injury. There are many different types of mechanical stimulation that can qualify for this sort of therapy even within the different schools of therapy.
Massage therapists cannot diagnose a strain or sprain and will require an official diagnosis before becoming part of the treatment team for a recent injury. They will often work with your physical therapist to achieve the goals set out by the team. There are not many studies as of yet to confirm that massage is beneficial to this type of recovery but it has been my experience that massage lowers pain and enables physical therapy to be more effective based on less pain and more ability to move the muscles around the damaged area. When I am working on an injured area while someone is using physical therapy, my approach is usually to do lighter pressure and stretching to the affected area and use deeper pressure or more aggressive techniques to the undamaged tissue around the area to enable damaged tissues to get more blood flow and movement.
For more chronic injury issues massage can lower pain and promote movement using deeper tissue manipulation and stretching. For athletes especially (whether professional or just for health and well being) I use a different set of skills than for a regular massage. Sports massages and sports recovery massages tend to focus on target areas based on both the clients activities and discomfort areas. For example a runner would want their hips, knees and/or ankles worked in order to recover from their running and enable them to run better, faster or longer. The approach would include treating muscle tension around the target areas and making sure to add in stretching and resistance stretching to the mix in order to optimize mobility and recovery. It has been my experience that almost none of my clients are able to "sleep through" this type of massage because it requires ongoing communication between therapist and client to ensure that the correct area is being worked and that discomfort levels are where they should be (a hurt or discomfort that feels like its making progress in the healing process not causing more pain). Often, this type of work is uncomfortable bordering on painful as deep tissues are manipulated to release tension and pain that is already within the area, this is not a comfortable type of manipulation but should not cause more pain to the client or the area after work is completed.
Stay strong. Stay healthy. Keep fighting for yourself, you’re worth it.
From: Ame Hinman at Hinman Healing
Think this is interesting? Read my first Massage For Health blog about stress Here or my second Massage For Health blog about the sixth sense Here
Further Reading on
Massage and Sports Injury Recovery
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