What grinds my gears: Want better results faster? Don’t wait.
image: @4lexmccarthy
Before you say anything, I know it’s my job as a Physio to listen to peoples complaints of pain and try to identify the issues at hand and come up with a solution to help the individual.
However, other Physiotherapist’s can back me when I say it’s frustrating listening to people complain about pain and how long it takes for injuries to resolve despite only attending to the issue weeks or even months after the initial issue began.
It is difficult to understand that someone is capable of dealing with pain for such a long time before finally decided to do anything about it.
Truth to the matter is, the longer you wait to treat something, the longer it may take to rehabilitate it back to a functional level.
Your body is like an assembly line. It’s finely tuned and constantly pushing out its product but when one area breaks down, it usually affects something else down the line. When one line gets overloaded for whatever reason, the backup might move to another line for relief. That relief line however, is not always capable of tolerating a continued increase in its workload. It can tolerate a load increase for a short period but eventually that line gets overworked and issues or breakdowns can begin to arise.
Similar things happen in the body.
Your body is exceptional at compensating when an issue arises. Sad thing is, like the assembly line, it’s not meant to compensate for a long period of time as those other muscles and joints that are helping out, begin to slowly break down due to unusually high levels of stress or load. It may not happen immediately, but with added time and increasing loads, the stress becomes worse and you inch closer to the breaking point.
As your body is very good at compensating, the longer you leave an injury untreated, more areas can become involved and require treatment and corrections which can lead to the increased rehab times incurred by some. This is why having injuries looked at sooner is more important in the recovery process.
I often have patients tell me that issues have continued for months and sometimes years since they began. Some may have sought out therapy before with minimal success. On the other hand, many opt not to go for therapy because of the cost, others forego therapy because it’s too time consuming and work/life is more important. Some simply just do not know better as they have never been educated on the benefits of rehabilitation and doctors continue to pump them full of meds and advice on rest, treating the symptoms and not the issues at hand.
If I can suggest one thing to any potential patient, do NOT let money be the deciding factor between an injured you and a healthy you. Leaving an injury untreated can result in management of that injury costing more down the road versus a little bit up front when you fix it immediately.
If you want to chat about this or anything else, feel free to shoot me an email at arasruslys@gmail.com or find me on instagram @arasr11 and facebook Aras Ruslys- Physiotherapist.
Live active and prosper.
Aras Ruslys
Registered Physiotherapist
