NAY to INFLAMMATION!

INFLAMMATION - THE WEAK LINK!

As someone who needs to perform on an injured area and does not want to do further damage, we need to understand how to control the natural healing process of inflammation to our benefit.    

For an athlete, inflammation can be considered a bad thing for one critical reason in particular… as discussed in Part 1  YAY for INFLAMMATION  Inflammation leads to instability which in turn leads to loss of function - great for protection, terrible for function...this will be the areas "Weak Link"

You can now see why as someone who relies on their body to perform...losing function is not a good thing - it can lead to further damage and injury - leading to a chronic issue.    

This is another reason why many athletic trainers and therapist immediately use ice on an athlete after an injury.  They are trying to stop this natural response from happening, or at least minimize it.    

We want to heal but we also want to get back to playing as soon as possible and as long as there is inflammation still in the area, we will be limited in what we can do, due to the risk of further damage.  

The problem lies in how to properly treat it for short term pain relief and long term healing benefits.  To ICE or Not To ICE...that is the question...that I will answer in future posts.