People often ask me what medicine to take after an injury. What medications do I take to get better faster? How to do rehabilitation exercises? Why is it not good for so long?
Here are my insights on these questions. Zhou Menghan, Department of Orthopedics, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University
What kind of medicine should I take after an injury?
To be precise, there is no medicine that can treat the injury after the injury. Why do I say so. It is because there is a very simple question. Is the flesh and bones of a person’s body made of rice or medicine from childhood? Everyone has only one answer, right? Then what should be used to replace the lack of flesh and bone (damage)? Should we use food or medicine? The answer is also needless to say, right?
In fact, all drugs (both Chinese and Western) that claim to heal injuries are painkillers and are not really drugs that directly heal wounds. We all know that spicy food and alcohol can make the body’s arteries dilate, the injured blood vessels are ruptured state, if the expansion at this time, is not more bleeding? The effect of the so-called “blood circulation” not only can not let the blood flow away from the injury, but will increase the bleeding, aggravating the swelling and pain. The so-called “invigorate the blood to remove blood stasis” is a pitiful phrase to the contrary. This is true of Chinese medicine, but what about Western medicine? All the painkillers in Western medicine (non-steroidal, narcotics, opiates) either have an anticoagulant effect or a vasodilator effect, and if taken immediately after the injury, they will also receive the effects mentioned earlier. Therefore, they should be avoided as much as possible.
Are painkillers not to be used?
Neither. They must be used when pain interferes with sleep in order to ensure adequate sleep. It is only during sleep that the body’s “growth function” works to repair the damaged area.
All painful injuries, after one or two nights of inactivity, are not painful (they feel the same as good people), but only when they are active. So painkillers don’t need and shouldn’t be used for very long. Long-term use of painkillers is equivalent to moving around with an injury in an anesthetized state (unaware of the pain), making the injury continue to worsen over time. So painkillers can aggravate the injury and prolong the pain.
Therefore, painkillers are used to ensure sleep. Other than that, they should not be used.
What kind of medicine do I take after an injury to get better faster?
After an injury, eat chicken, duck, fish and eggs, such as “medicine” to get better quickly. Chicken, duck, fish and eggs are rich in protein, which is equivalent to the materials used to build a house, and the house will be built quickly if there are enough materials. However, building a house to have a fixed completion time, early completion of the house is very easy to deformation and not strong tofu dregs project. The body is the same. After each kind of tissue damage, from the damage to the completion of repair has its own roughly fixed time. Just as there is a time (process) for a person to go through the decades of early childhood, adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age from birth to death. No one wants to die immediately after birth. No drug can shorten the time for the body to recover. How quickly the body recovers is affected only by the degree of injury, age, gender, and physical strength. The less severe the injury and the younger the age, the faster the recovery. Men usually recover faster than women (androgens promote protein synthesis). Those with strong constitution recover faster than those with weak constitution (one is high androgen secretion, the other is strong absorption ability).
Suppose there is a drug that allows immediate wound healing. This drug will inevitably speed up the body’s metabolism and shorten a person’s life span. Eighteen today, eighty tomorrow. Who wants to try it? So want to “get well faster” are cranial moment into the water (whether the patient or doctor).
So, when is it better to eat chicken, duck, fish and eggs? Should be based on the injury, the lighter in two days after the injury, the heavier in five days before and after. After the injury, there is dead tissue around the wound, and at this time, the breakdown of injured tissue is greater than the synthesis. Prematurely supplementing protein, one is not utilized, and the other is to increase the body’s metabolic burden. So there is no need to supplement in a hurry.
How to do rehabilitation exercises?
People who can ask this question are mostly those who want to get well quickly. In principle, you can’t do any light activities in the area after the injury. For example, if you are sticking an object, you can’t stick it to the place where you keep uncovering the glue. Therefore, you cannot talk about any rehabilitation exercises.
The time for rehabilitation activities is after the soft tissues have fully recovered and the bone tissue scabs have formed. Soft tissues do not recover, with the injury activity, the scar formed by the wound is wide, can not return to the strength and tension before the injury, it is easy to re-injury. Many books are written to “early activity to prevent adhesions”. I do not know that this statement is wrong. The growth of the wound is adhesions, no adhesions, there is no growth. Prevention of adhesions is to prevent growth, and how to talk about recovery?
The purpose of rehabilitation activities is to restore the function that existed before the injury (being able to do the movements or things that you could do before the injury), not to prevent adhesions. The process of rehabilitation is to allow the adhesions (haphazardly growing together) to adapt and regain their original function through activity modification.
Therefore, there is no need for premature activity. Premature activity is bound to affect the recovery of the injury.
Why is it that many people do not do well for a long time after the injury?
This problem is relatively complex, and is mostly related to the injured person and improper treatment.
Related to the injured person: the following
1 After the injury, there is no recuperation time for the injured area because of non-stop activities.
2 misjudgment of the injured tissue, bone, ligament injury misjudged as flesh and skin injury. Premature activity.
3 there is a misunderstanding of the functional recovery of the injured tissue (that should be fully restored to the pre-injury state), mild injury tissue function can be fully restored, moderate injury partial or most of the functional recovery, severe injury function can only be partially restored or even not restored.
And improper treatment related to.
1 ligament injury or fracture injury without external fixation or insufficient fixation time.
2 tendon injury without sutures.
3 tendon sheath injury relaxation recuperation time is not enough.
4 After having internal fixation surgery, no external fixation is added.
There are cases where the injured person is unaware of the injury, but there are also cases where the doctor missed the diagnosis and misdiagnosis and the doctor’s ignorance.
There is an old saying that “injuries and illnesses” are “three parts treatment, seven parts recuperation”. This is not an overstatement, but an understatement. All injuries and illnesses (except bacterial infections) are very nurturing. Because except for antibiotics, in good nutritional condition, no medicine can directly cure the injury or illness. Except for bacterial infections, all injuries and illnesses rely on their own recovery. If you do not have the ability to recover yourself, even the best doctors can not help. The reason why some people’s injuries do not recover in the hands of one doctor and get recovered in the hands of another doctor is that there are only two possibilities: one is that the initial doctor was a quack and mishandled the injury; the other is that it is time to recover.
Treatment of common injuries and approximate recovery time
Let’s start with fractures. The management of fractures after they are repositioned is internal fixation (surgery) and external fixation. The purpose of fixation is to allow the bone to grow in an inactive state. Internal fixation can do or almost do the job of restoring the fracture to the way it was at birth, but there is a risk of infection and non-growth (healing). Even with internal fixation, external fixation should not be left out. Many doctors assume that internal fixators are strong. It is true that a freshly fitted internal fixator is very strong, but the internal fixator is fitted to the bone, which is artificially new to the bone, and after three weeks, it will loosen with slight pressure, and at this time the bone with both injuries has not grown together, and if you move around, the bone will not stick together even if a lot of scabs form around the broken end (many doctors do not understand this). The usual material for external fixation is plaster. You can also choose your own material, such as a wooden board or a bandage soaked in egg white or batter.
The duration of bone fixation varies depending on age and location. Four weeks is typical for children and six to twelve weeks for adults. This is the time when the bone scabs are formed and will not separate again.
Then there are the ligaments. Ligament injuries can take as long to fix as bone, or even longer. The ligaments themselves have no blood supply, so recovery time is long and even when they do recover, it is difficult to fully achieve pre-injury strength.
The immobilization time for muscle injuries is three to eight weeks. After this time, they can basically recover to a state close to that before the injury.
Fascial injuries generally do not require immobilization, and the recovery time is one to three weeks.
The recovery time for injuries to the skin is three to fourteen days.
Postures that should be maintained to relieve pain in each area
Maintaining a pain-free posture will help the recovery time be relatively short. Otherwise, heck, it naturally hurts for a few more days.
For neck and shoulder pain, you should stay in the chest up position. Minimize head movement. For three to five days, it can heal itself.
For pain in the front chest, you can tighten the chest with a wide cloth band. The method of tightening is to exhale the gas in the chest as much as possible and hold it in. Tightening at this time reduces the degree of thoracic movement and also reduces pain. Self-healing in one to two months
For the pain in the back of the chest, you can keep your head flat and straighten your chest and back. Self-healing in three to ten days.
The best position to relieve low back pain is either standing or lying down. If standing up straight is difficult, you can maintain a slightly forward leaning, slightly hip and knee flexed position when standing upright. It is best to lie in bed. At the beginning of the pain, immediately lie in bed, continue to lie for two days (as said before, the pain is only two days), basically can not lie and leave the bed to move. Even in the case of fractures in the elderly, two weeks of bed rest will allow you to leave bed upright, and full recovery will take about three months.
Hip pain, or pain in the back of the femur (thigh), can be both at the same time, or separately. It heals itself in the same way as low back pain, in about one to three weeks.
The pain in the sacral area mainly affects the sitting position. It is not painful as long as one does not lean over.
Tail injury, keeping standing or sitting on one hip, can reduce pain.
Upper extremity, shoulder pain, you can bend the elbow chest suspension for three to eight weeks, soft tissue injuries can be recovered. Suspension belt is best crossbody, frontal suspension will cause neck pain. Shoulder and elbow soft tissue injuries, all can be carried in a sling to move the hand.
Pain in the finger joints, finger roots, and wrists, initially just keeping the hand down, heals itself in two to six weeks. It can also heal spontaneously in three to six months with improper treatment.
Pain in the hip that is painless unilaterally on standing can recuperate in bed or in a seated position and heal spontaneously in about three to six weeks. With unilateral standing pain, you need to go to the hospital for examination.
Knee pain, if unilateral standing is painless, should be kept to a minimum during the painful period. Staying off your feet will usually heal on its own in two to eight weeks. If you have pain standing on one foot, you need to go to the hospital.
For ankle pain, if you have pain standing unilaterally, self-treatment is the same as for the knee, and recovery time is the same.
For foot pain, try not to walk or stand during the painful period, but walk with heel touching the ground for short distances (about ten meters). Keep it for two to three weeks and it will heal on its own.
For pain under the heel, walk as little as possible during the painful period. , when walking stride, the heel of the front foot to the toe of the back foot should not have more than one foot length. Also replace thick rubber-soled shoes. It will heal itself in about one to two months.
For pain in the back of the heel, replace the shoe with a loose-fitting hind-sole and it will heal itself in about one month.
Why not use other traditional and commonly used methods?
You may have noticed that the above injury management does not only not mention medicine, but also other methods. This is because Chinese medicine’s massage, plasters, medicinal wine, needles, moxibustion, small needle knife, etc., Western medicine’s physical therapy (infrared, medium wave, short barge, ultra short wave, microwave, wax therapy and other thermal therapy), closed, etc. are ineffective, and even counterproductive – aggravating the injury and prolonging the pain.
So why do these methods still circulate and prevail?
This begins with the nature of the profession of doctors. Ancient and modern, except for military doctors, all doctors rely on the practice of medicine to earn a living, full of desire for money. If you don’t get some method, how can you get the patient to pay for it. Therefore, all doctors are using temporary methods of pain removal. As long as they can get the money and leave, the pain of the patient is irrelevant to the doctor. The patient then pain will have to endure, or a different doctor to see.
For example, after the injury of the bruise medicine wine, wipe to the injury, is the alcohol evaporates to take away the body temperature to produce a cool feeling, can reduce pain. Ten minutes later will produce a burning pain (skin tender will also leave a burning lesion). At this point the doctor has sold out of drugs. Then, such as massage tui na, massage initial, pain is unbearable, massage end pain relief. After two hours of massage will be increased pain, can not move. At this point the masseur has taken the money away. Then again, the cream, just stick on a warm feeling, a long time, there will be burning-like pain (burns).
So that the doctor’s profit motive, ancient and modern are the same. From ancient times to the present, doctors are wolves. Hungry wolves are always aggressive towards sheep. Although there is no shortage of stories about doctors treating patients and saving lives, is there always more instances of doctors pitting people or saving lives? Doctors are the police of the sick and wounded. If the police had rewards for arresting people, how many people would have been arrested unjustly? Later on, the church ran charity hospitals, raising doctors and treating them free of charge, so that the treatment of patients was separated from the collection of money, and the doctors became “angels” (the wolves who have eaten enough will play with the sheep). Now the health care reform has restored doctors to their original face of wolves. What has changed with the times is that the original wolves (wandering doctors) have gathered in the wolf’s den (hospital). The previous wrong methods can still be used to fool money. We have been taught from childhood and subconsciously believe that these methods are all right. Unbeknownst to us, people who use these methods have been in pain and then “boiled” for time to heal themselves.
If someone is attracted to these traditional methods and would like to try them out, I won’t stop them. It’s just a few more days of pain, and it won’t kill anyone.
Three methods of self-disposal after injury.
One does not move the injured part. There are fixed conditions, it is best to temporarily fixed.
Two do cold compresses (not ice). Ice will form skin frostbite.
Three judgment is not allowed to determine the extent of the injury, go to the hospital as soon as possible for examination.
Can’t you move after the injury?
After the injury is not forever can not move, people are animals, how can not move? Only in the painful period of soft tissue injury and fracture end of the growth period can not be active.
Summary
The principle of post-injury recovery is to maintain a pain-free posture as early as possible (how comfortable how to do). Try not to use pain medication and keep it until the injury heals.