Thank you for joining me again this evening for our nightly podcasts. I perform these podcasts in the hopes that you will be able to educate yourself on the topics discussed so you can make better informed medical decisions regarding your health in the future. I am doctor Harrison Campbell of Restoration Health a premier sugar land chiropractors office. Previously we discussed temperature changes from ice and heat on the body. Tonight, we will be discussing the acronym RICE and how it influences injuries.
Anyone who has played sports or knows someone who has played sports has heard of the term RICE. It stands for rest, ice, compression, and elevate. We will break down the components to this acronym and add a part that most everyone leaves off.
To start we will look at the rest portion of RICE. Rest is as the term implies resting, letting the injured tissue rest by either staying off an injured ankle or not lifting with an injured shoulder. The reasoning behind this is to avoid further injury to the tissue. Many of you who have listened to other podcasts are probably saying but what about motion healing? The answer as sugar land chiropractors know is simply, motions heals during the rehabilitation phase. After the initial injury, there needs to be a brief window where the body is allowed to rest.
Ice is something that we discussed in a previous podcast. Using ice in the initial seventy-two hours will help reduce the inflammation in and around the injured tissue. This will help aid the healing process as inflammation as sugar land chiropractors know slows the capacity of the tissue to heal quickly. By using the fifteen on fifteen off rule, the patient can greatly decrease the inflammation, especially the initial inflammation resulting from the injury. This use of ice on and off will create a pumping action in the blood vessels driving the inflammation out of the area of the injured tissue. This allows the healing factors to penetrate into the injured tissue and start the healing process.
The compression portion of the RICE is the compression. The purpose of compression is to reduce the inflammation which can occur, but also to reduce pain. Let us focus on the inflammation first. Inflammation, as sugar land chiropractors know, is swelling of the injured tissue due to excess fluid accumulating in the area. Compression prevents the swelling from occurring by limiting the ability of the tissue to swell. It creates a physical barrier to reduce tissue swelling. On the pain aspect, the compression stimulates touch receptors. It is similar to you grabbing your arm when it is hurt. You perform this action instinctually because it reduces the pain you feel.
The reason behind this as sugar land chiropractors know is the nerve pathways. As the touch pathway travels towards the brain it crosses over the pain pathway. What this means in the impulses traveling up the touch pathway reduces the impulses traveling up the pain pathway. This is turn means the sensation of pain which reaches the brain is reduced, thereby taking away some of the pain you are experiencing. The notion of rubbing a wound to make it feel better is, in fact, a reality.
Sugar Land Chiropractors | Always Showing You The Rules?
Now we come to the final letter of RICE in elevation. The elevation is simply enough. By raising the injured body part above the level of the heart we enhance the removal of inflammation from the tissue with the assistance of gravity. By raising the injured tissue above the level of the heart, the laws of gravity will force the excess fluid of inflammation back towards the heart. This will further reduce the inflammation at this site of injury and allow the healing factors to start the repair process of the damaged tissue.
The part that is more often than not left out of the RICE is therapy. When we stated earlier about the initial phase of RICE being to rest, people often perform this step incorrectly. Motion heals. To this effect, the rest portion is only performed after the initial onset of the injury. Beyond that immediate timeframe, therapy becomes an important factor for the healing process. Each injury regardless of severity requires therapy of some form.
This therapy can be something as simple as soft tissue work and stretching at home to full-blown rehabilitation at a clinic. The reasoning for this is every injury results in scar tissue formation and damage to the bodyís proprioception. Now scar tissue has a negative connotation with most people, but sugar land chiropractors know scar tissue is vital if you want soft tissue injuries healing. The problem lies in scar tissue is not formed along with the same pattern as the injured tissue. This requires functional movements and soft tissue work to break apart the scar tissue which is not conducive to the tissue being repaired. This will allow for a normal range of motion to be restored and the tissue to be functional.
As for the proprioception, this is the bodyís ability to know where it is in space. The nerve receptors in the joints, muscles, and tendons send information to the brain to make sure it knows where everything is in relation to itself. Proprioception as sugar land chiropractors can tell you is why you can know where your hand is when your eyes are closed. Injuries damage the receptors which send this information. This means incorrect information is relayed to the brain resulting in the brain believes the body is somewhere it is not. Now, this is not drastic, but each recurrent injury further reduces the accuracy of this data. Therapy helps reset this receptor to provide accurate data to the brain.
Thank you for joining me again this evening for another great podcast. I hope you enjoyed the discussion on the acronym RICE and the reasoning behind each of the terms. As always should you or someone you know require a sugar land chiropractors services or simply have more questions on what was discussed please call Restoration Health today. We would love to schedule you an appointment and get you on the path to better health today. Thank you once again for joining us. Have a good night.