Rehabilitation
Healing is a Process
After an injury, your body begins to heal in three separate and distinct phases – the Inflammatory Phase, the Repair Phase and the Remodeling Phase. For the best long-term results and recovery from injury, it is essential that your body heals properly and receives the correct type of care appropriate during each phase.
When your body is injured, the healing process begins almost immediately with pain and swelling – the Inflammatory Phase. Causing pain is often your body’s only way of telling you something isn’t right. The Inflammatory Phase of Healing typically lasts from 0 to 3 days but can be much longer depending upon the severity of injury. Essentially, your body is trying to immobilize the injured areas and prevent you from injuring yourself further.
The second phase of healing is called the Repair Phase. During this time your body begins putting down “glue” in the injured tissues that were torn, broken or in need of healing. This process can last up to 6 months and during this time more aggressive treatment such as Physical Therapy and other types of active rehabilitative procedures may be contraindicated. Why? The injured tissues are not strong enough and not yet healed where they are ready to be stretched and strengthened.
This is why starting Physical Therapy too soon following an injury can actually make your condition worse, impede the healing process and can even cause setbacks in your recovery meaning a longer treatment time to achieve the same outcome.
The Final Phase – Remodelling
In the final phase of healing, the Remodeling Phase, body tissues have healed adequately and can now begin to be strengthened through more intense physical Rehabilitation and Active Care. The Remodelling phase of healing typically lasts from 6 months to 1 year.
Multiple factors may affect or delay the healing process including the location of injury, type of injured tissue, function of that tissue and the extent to which the tissue is damaged. For all these reasons it is quite common to have different areas of the body healing at different rates. This means one part of your body may be healing quickly and already in the Remodeling Phase while another may still be stuck in the Repair Phase laying down new scar tissue.
Exercises and Stretching
As you begin to feel better, we start to incorporate specific Home Exercises and Stretches that stimulate the injured tissues to heal, strengthen and align properly. Remember, as scar tissue is laid down, it’s like your body is filling in the gaps in the torn tissues with glue. Unfortunately, scar tissue is quite inferior to the body’s original tissue and is not nearly as flexible nor as strong as the tissue it’s replacing. This also makes it more prone to re-injury.
If you have ever had a bad cut, scrape or burn, you quickly noticed that the replacement tissue formed was definitely not the same as the original and surrounding tissues. It looks a little different, feels a little different, and may even be thicker, smoother and commonly, more sensitive to touch.
The bottom line is scar tissue is inferior to the original tissue it’s replacing.
For this reason, we provide specific Home Exercises, Stretches and other recommendations essential to helping make sure that the newly formed scar tissue fibers heal in the same direction as the ones they are replacing. This helps maximize future body strength, flexibility and function as well as minimizing the chances of re-injury.