Why It’s Super Important To Treat An Injury RIGHT AWAY
Often in my practice, when people call in for treatments, for themselves or for their animals, they will say something like “Oh I’ve had this for a while,” a while meaning somewhere in the realm of a month to a few months usually. I think people’s first instinct when either they, or their animals get hurt, is it wait it out and “see what happens.” To see if they need to do something about it, or to see if it will just go away on its own.
What you should actually do, is the complete opposite of that, and come in to get it treated RIGHT AWAY, as soon as possible. And I’m going to tell you why.
A Few Stories For You
Here are a few examples from my life. A few years ago, we were out in Colorado for a family ski trip. We had just arrived to our hotel, and were going to go skiing the next morning. It was nighttime, and I was getting the pull out bed ready. As I was pulling it out of the couch, the metal bar at the bottom of the bed snapped open suddenly, instead of opening slowly. And it slammed into my elbow, really hard. I heard a cracking sound and wondered if I had in fact broken a bone. I instantly thought “Oh no,” because I knew this wasn’t just going to be a little bruise or something. I thought, “I haven’t even skied yet, and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to put weight on this arm tomorrow to use my poles.” Just a few moments after hitting it, the swelling started, and it was rapidly getting bigger. I had been just about to go to sleep, and it was late. So I thought, “Well, I brought my FSM (Frequency Specific Microcurrent) machine with me (a therapy I use often in my practice), and I know the sooner you treat something the better off you are.”
I set it up and went to sleep with it running. I woke up a couple times in the night and started a new program on it. Overall, throughout the night I ran a couple programs, one called Concussion, which is great for hit your head concussions, but also speeds up healing for anything in the body, 2-3x faster. Then I ran a program for a new soft tissue injury. When I woke up in the morning, I was afraid to look, because I fully expected to have a super swollen elbow that was all black and blue and super painful to move. I peeked down at my elbow and was IN SHOCK!!! In a good way. There was NO swelling, and the only visible mark you could see, was a small red circle the size of a quarter. Barely sensitive to the touch. I was overjoyed, and had a great week of skiing without pain!
A Couple More Recent Examples
On Tuesday January 19th, 2021 at 12:30 am, I was visiting my mom, and when I was about to leave. I thought, I’ll use the bathroom quick before I get in the car. So I hurried into the bathroom, not paying much attention, and slammed my toe into the wall. Very hard. Of course I instantly sat on the floor of the bathroom and grabbed my foot, and also there was some swearing, because it hurt. I thought, “Oh no, I think I just broke my toe.” I had broken the same toe, pinky toe on my right foot a few summers before and knew how it felt. And this felt the exact same way. I was super bummed, because my brothers and my husband and I had already planned a snowboard trip to Lutsen for the January 29th weekend. 10 days away. I was super excited for that trip, and the chance to get out of the house, to do something fun and outdoors during COVID. We had already purchased our tickets, and they were non-refundable. I didn’t want to be stuck at the hotel room or just sitting in a chalet all day while they got to go out snowboarding. I knew either way this was bad news, because whether it was a broken toe, or an extreme sprain/strain, they usually taken 4-6 weeks to heal MINIMUM.
Here’s a cute baby foot, instead of my not cute sprained toe.
Not to mention that snowboarding is about the worst thing you could do for a toe injury. Your feet are compressed into boots, and you spend half your time snowboarding with a lot of weight on your toes, and the other half leaning back towards your heels, which means your toes are flexed back, which would feel not so great with that injury.
I knew I had very limited time to try to heal this injury, and I also knew the sooner I treated it, the better off I would be. I woke up the next morning, and my toe was so swollen, I could tell it was before I even looked, because it felt so different. I looked at it, not only was it very swollen, it was also bright red with significant bruising. And I thought, “Crap, it is broken.” That day at work, I did ultrasound on my toe to see if it was broken. If it was, it would hurt, because ultrasound has vibrations, and that vibration would cause pain if your bone is broken. I moved the ultrasound wand all over, and it didn’t hurt anywhere! Good news! That means it very likely wasn’t broken. Which shocked me because the pain, and look was exactly the same as when I broke it last time. I did an ultrasound treatment on my toe. And I put Rock Tape on it (a type of Kinesiotape - helps increase blood flow, decrease swelling, and increase lymph drainage, in addition to helping to support movement). When I got home, I ran 3 FSM programs on it, The Concussion one to speed up healing, the one for a new Soft Tissue Injury, and one for extremity joint, muscle, ligament, tendons and bursa, which would be great for a sprain/strain. Also all day long, I had been taking inflamase every hour. Inflamase is a supplement I sell at my office, it sells more than any other supplement because once people have used it, they come back and ask for it whenever they run out, because it works so well. Inflamase is an enzyme supplement that decreases swelling and inflammation, speeds up healing, and helps with GI issues.
By that Thursday, so day 3 after my injury, I took off the Rock Tape to see how it looked, because it was feeling quite a bit better. I had noticed a couple times I instinctively did a movement that should’ve hurt my toe, but it didn’t. Running inside from the car when it was really cold outside. And going up on my tip toes to reach for something in a cupboard. Keep in mind I had done ultrasound on it a couple times, and had been taking inflamase this whole time, 1/hour while awake, and had run probably 6 FSM programs on it. I couldn’t believe how much better it looked! It was no longer red at all, and you couldn’t see much visible swelling. There was a bruise along the inside and the outside of my toe, but it was significantly smaller than it had been! And it was only day 3 post injury! At that point, I knew I would be able to go snowboarding!
And I did! It was a little sore putting my foot into my boots in the morning, and to walk in my snowboard boots, but once I was on the hill, I couldn’t even feel it!
Snowboarding at Lutsen!
A Neck in Need of Adjustment
On this snowboarding trip with me, was my husband Scott, and my two brothers, Grant and Kai. Grant and Kai are newer to snowboarding, and Kai was especially excited to snowboard this weekend because he had just purchased all of his own snowboarding equipment. And it was his first time using it. I believe due to this excitement, and the fact that his is still a very young man, 25, he was snowboarding faster and more intensely than he maybe should’ve been. Due to this he had several intense falls. He started off the weekend at a bit of a deficit due to sleeping in an odd position. He woke up the morning we were driving to Lutsen and told me his neck really was hurting, and that he wasn’t really able to turn his head side to side. I gave him a chiropractic adjustment before we got on the road. That afternoon, when we arrived in Lutsen, he said that his neck was feeling better, but was still sore. I gave him another chiropractic adjustment.
The next morning, Kai asked me to adjust him one more time before we went out on the hill, because he said he still wasn’t 100%. So I adjusted him one more time, and we hit the hill. He was feeling really good. Until just before lunch when he fell down the hill and landed on his neck, which of course made his neck instantly hurt again, and made it so he wasn’t able to turn his head side to side, which is a very important part of snowboarding, since you have a whole blindside behind you. I ended up giving him one more adjustment in the chalet. He was feeling much better after, and had a great rest of the day snowboarding. His neck was WAY out of alignment before I gave him his first adjustment, and I believe if he didn’t get those adjustments right away, his neck would’ve been hurting for a long time, and he would’ve had much less fun snowboarding.
A Sprained Ankle
Then, day 2 of snowboarding, on the second run of the day, I was snowboarding behind the boys and I saw Kai tumble all the way down a hill and it looked like a hard fall. When he fell, he immediately unsnapped his left foot from his snowboard binding and grabbed it and was saying “Ouch” a lot. From the way I saw him fall, I thought he likely had a sprained ankle, and that it was a bad sprain. I asked him if it felt sprained and he said he didn’t think so. We waited in the middle of the hill for a while and then he said he was ready to go. We snowboarded for 2 more hours until lunch, he said it felt ok while he was snowboarding down the hill, and hurt the most when he was getting on and off the lift. I still had a feeling it was sprained.
We went in for lunch and about a half hour later we got up to get back on the hill for the afternoon, and Kai could barely walk. He was limping heavily and could hardly go get his board. Luckily, we were right next to the gondola as we had planned to go down the gondola and ski in a different area for the afternoon. Kai said he was going to sit out for a half hour and see if it felt any better, and then decide if he would snowboard the rest of the day. Turns out after that half hour his ankle still felt terrible, and he limped his way back to the car.
When we got back to the car later, he said his ankle was hurting really bad and that taking his snowboard boot off had been excruciating. I knew then for sure he had a sprained ankle, and that he had snowboarded on it for 2 hours after spraining it, which was not good. I got him set up to treat it our whole 5 hour drive home. I told Kai to start taking inflamase, 1 per hour to continuously take down his inflammation. I had also brought my FSM (Frequency Specific Microcurrent) machine with me. I set it up on Kai, and for 5 hours we ran programs on him. To speed up healing, get rid of inflammation and to heal extremity (i.e ankle) muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bursas. And we happened to have brought a cooler with ice on the trip, so we iced it the whole way home. Kai fell asleep in the car after some time, while his treatments were working.
We stopped for dinner on the way home, and Grant and I had to be on each side of Kai so we could help him get into the restaurant and to the table. At this point he was unable to put any weight on his ankle.
I told Kai to come into my office right away the next day for treatment. He came in and I did ultrasound on his ankle (ultrasound works through soundwaves; it heats and relaxes the muscles, ultrasound therapy also breaks down scar tissue and increases local blood flow. All of this combines to increase healing rates in the area). After ultrasound I ran the FSM therapy programs again. And finally, I put Rock Tape on his ankle.
Kai came to the office for that same treatment again later that week. And then a couple times the following week. By the end of the first week he went from not being able to put any weight on his ankle to walking with a slight limp and the pain was vastly decreased. I could also watch his swelling go down huge amounts day to day. And by the end of the second week he said he didn’t notice it much at all anymore, unless he moved in a couple specific ways. This is amazing healing time for a sprained ankle! Especially one that was as badly sprained as his. Typical healing time for a sprained ankle is 6 weeks. It wasn’t completely healed after two weeks, but it was getting close.
This is why you should treat injuries immediately instead of “waiting and seeing” how it does.
I can tell you from 6 1/2 years in practice, that I’ve seen this over and over again. The patients that come in right away after an injury or bring their pets in right away have incredibly fast healing times and often have less lasting effects from their injuries. The patients that wait until something has been bothering them for several months up to a year, or the animals that have had an injury that long take much longer to heal and need more treatments. This isn’t to say that I can’t help those patients, I absolutely can! But it takes longer, and more treatments.
This blog post is just to get you to start to think differently about injuries. Instead of doing the wait and see, come in and get treated right away! It will be worth it! Have a lovely week gang!
