Injury Healing times

I’ve previously written about when pain is not always an injury, but when there is an injury ie actual physiological disruption of tissue, there is a healing process that needs to take place!

This is unfortunately a slow process and much slower than most people think. A common misconception is bone healing, most people know that a broken bone is in a cast for six weeks and once the cast is off they’re good to go. This is however just the first stage of bone healing (callus formation), full bone healing takes up to 9-12months!

All tissue in the body heals at different rates and there’s many aspects that influence this, such as the type of tissue, it’s location, blood supply, co-mobidities, medications and health in general.

We want to optimise healing as much as possible which means we need to give the body the best environment to promote healing.

The first thing to look at is your general health, if you eat poorly, have unhealthy habits such as smoking/vaping and are inactive, your body will be slower to heal, it is as simple as that. Making positive changes to your health will give the injured tissue the nutrients it needs to heal optimally.

Secondary is addressing the stress on the tissue. Tissue stress is good, it promotes the tissue to heal, but it needs to be dosed appropriately at different stages of the healing process. This is easier to do for different areas, such as an ankle, you can go on crutches or in a moonboot, this significantly reduces the stress through ankle. This is more difficult to do for a lower back (braces for backs do exist, but they’re not very effective).

So there needs to be a change in the way we go about our lives reduce the stress on the back to allow the injured tissue to heal. This can be adjusting the way we do repeated movements throughout the day, sitting postures and positions as well as modifying work duties.

This then needs to be gradually progressed to promote the tissues to heal, as well as improve its capacity to take on stress so the injury is less likely to happen again.

All tissue heals at different rates and we have to understand this and work with it, instead of trying to skip steps or rush.