Rehabilitative Exercise after an injury is essential to your recovery. The recuperation period following an injury may take time, and you may even need bed rest or may have to immobilize the affected area, particularly with a broken arm, leg, or foot. This rest and recovery is crucial for your injury to heal, but the prolonged immobilization can result in muscle weakness and a loss of bone mass. That’s where rehabilitative exercise comes in.
If you suffered a traumatic injury requiring complete bed rest, the loss of muscle and bone mass can seriously affect your mobility and range of motion. At Pinnacle Health Chiropractic, we want to help you get moving again in order to restore function.
Broken bones, fractures, severe sprains, torn ligaments, and strained muscles are a fact of everyday life. Whether you’re a student athlete or active senior — or somewhere in between — no one is immune to injury. It’s the focus of rehabilitative exercise to restore normal range of motion, functional mobility, and strength following an injury or surgery. Rehabilitative Exercise also helps alleviate much of the pain and inflammation that accompany your injury.
Working out is the last thing you feel like doing after suffering an injury. Between the pain and the pain medication, you’re content to just stay put and binge-watch a favorite TV show, slowly healing. But the old adage “move it or lose it” rings especially true post-injury.
You need to get started with rehabilitative exercise as soon as possible in order to fully recover and ensure movement is restored. There are many ways in which Rehabilitative Exercise helps you heal after an injury. Here are a few:
Increasing blood flow and circulation helps with the healing process. Rehabilitative Exercise encourages you to move appropriately, thereby avoiding further injury. Rehabilitative Exercise also reduces inflammation and helps prevent complications such as scar tissue, which can interfere with mobility and recovery.
Safe and timely recovery from a surgical procedure or injury is a priority. A program of rehabilitative exercise helps you heal sooner, move better, and limit your need for pain medicine.
Some injuries take away your ability to move as you did before your injury. A return to your previous mobility can take time, and some movement may never be restored. By working with a qualified rehabilitative exercise Specialist, you can strengthen the muscles surrounding the affected area, improve your flexibility, and slowly regain your range of motion.
For those who’ve suffered a prior injury and healed without the benefit of rehabilitative exercise, the result is often chronic pain. Chronic pain because of improper or incomplete healing of muscles, tendons, and ligaments can be debilitating and difficult to control. Over time, you might develop postures that minimize pain by limiting the use of the injured limb or muscles.
Rehabilitative Exercise can help you manage the pain, as well as examine which factors may be contributing to inflammation. Through use of a mix of techniques, your Rehabilitative Exercise Specialist works to strengthen the weaknesses at the source of your pain and restore your mobility so that you are able to move again with ease.
Life is busy, and you may have fallen behind with work or your to-do list because of your injury. It certainly is tempting to forego the physician-recommended rehabilitative exercise. But before you do, consider the consequences.
Rehabilitative Exercise prepares your body to resume your regular activities. If you return to your pre-injury life without the guidance of a Rehabilitative Exercise specialist, you could end up re-injuring yourself by doing too much too soon. You need to learn the proper way to approach certain physical activities, and doing so without the advice of a professional poses far too many risks.
Skipping rehabilitative exercise can actually hit you in the pocketbook. A study of patients with lower-back pain showed that rehabilitative exercise reduced future treatment costs by 72% in just one year.
Even if you avoid re-injury, you can expect recovery to take much longer without rehabilitative exercise. You may fail to heal fully, or you may heal in a way that results in chronic pain. Most patients wish to return to their regular activities soon after recovery. The only way to do so safely and effectively is through rehabilitative exercise.
Rehabilitative Exercise is no picnic. It can be difficult, especially in the beginning, but the benefits are worth the effort, and skipping Rehabilitative Exercise can have long-lasting implications. If you’ve suffered an injury and want to return to a functioning and mobile lifestyle, contact Pinnacle Health Chiropractic. Begin your rehabilitative exercise as soon as possible. What are you waiting for?
