You were shoveling and strained your back. You were walking through the house, twisted your ankle and fell. You sat on a very long plane flight and during the flight your neck and low back were in pain. You were hiking in preparation to climb a mountain and were practicing “ice pick arrest” (a process of throwing yourself many times down the side of an icy surface, sliding and using your icepick to help keep yourself from flying off the edge of a “mountain”). You were going to the gym to take in just one more step aerobics class and halfway through, your low back was strained to the point that you had to stop and practically hobble back to the locker room.
Those are just examples of a few cases that came in yesterday.
What is the best course of action in these cases? The first is to give your body a chance to recover by stopping the activity that aggravated you in the first place. In other words, rest.
The second step is to ice, or utilize a cold compress of some sort (I’m always a fan of using a bag of frozen peas!). Why ice and not heat? When you have strained a region of your body, more often than not you have inflammation, a swelling of the surrounding tissues. This is your body’s attempt at protecting that area from further harm. Enough swelling can eventually put added pressure on nerves that transmit pain. If you apply heat to the area, the applied effect is ease and relief, but heat actually opens capillary beds and allows more fluid to rush into the site, leading to more swelling and in most cases, the pain persists longer than intended.
If you instead apply ice, which almost never feels as good as heat on application, the result is constriction of capillary beds and restriction of the amount of blood flow into the region. This is the better option in these cases. The rule with icing is to wrap the ice pack in a paper towel or hand towel and apply for 10-15 minutes per site. Wait 45-60 minutes and repeat if necessary. Studies suggest that icing for more than 15-20 minutes on a site at a time causes the body to react as if there was heat on the region. So, in this case, more isn’t always better.
Then in many cases compression of the region can be very helpful as well. An ace bandage around a sprained ankle. A lumbar support around a low back. A rib brace around a strained rib. And if it’s an extremity like a leg, ankle, forearm, or wrist, then elevate it.
These are all techniques used to help control inflammation, the excess fluid that builds up around a stressed part of the body.
If you follow these guidelines, they will be of tremendous help when you next experience an insult or injury to your body, and you can then be in better shape to then call your chiropractor and schedule an adjustment to help your alignment. More often than not, a joint out of alignment is the problem causing the swelling. Remove the subluxation and you are better indeed.
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