The Great Ganesha

Apparently, running when you’re injured is good for you. An article ($) in January’s NYT talks about running through injuries and how it helps them heal faster. Now, before you naysayer couch-potato-types jump on me, it’s not like you should run with shattered kneecaps and fractured tibias, but you can run with certain not-so-serious (that’s a technical term) injuries. In fact, it may help them heal. The bottomline, of course, is that you should use your common sense.

It sounds almost like heresy. The usual advice in treating injuries is to rest until the pain goes away. But Dr. Weinstein and a number of leading sports medicine specialists say that is outdated and counterproductive. In fact, Dr. Weinstein says, when active people consult him, he usually tells them to keep exercising.

The idea, these orthopedists and exercise specialists say, is to use common sense. If you’ve got tendinitis or sprained a muscle or tendon by doing too much, don’t go right back to exercising at the same level. [link]

Weinstein is an orthopaedic surgeon at Dartmouth College. He should know. Not just because he’s in the business, but because he himself has run through several injuries, including lower back pain.

[He] was stretching to lift a heavy box and twisted his back. The pain was agonizing. He could not sit, and when he lay down he could barely get up.

”I took an anti-inflammatory, iced up, and off I went [for a run],” Dr. Weinstein recalled. When he returned, he said, he felt ”pretty good.” [link]

Picture Source: National Library of Medicine

The running is particularly good for inflamed tissue, but only when they are at a particular stage of inflammation.

…painful conditions that are essentially inflammation — arthritis and chronic lower back pain — actually improve when patients keep moving.

…

First, forceful stretching of tendons elicits the production of molecules that are involved in inflammation. But small repeated stretching of tendons that are already inflamed leads to the production of molecules that heal inflammation. That suggests moderate exercise can actually speed healing.

And now, their [Dr. Freddie Fu, a sports medicine expert and chairman of the orthopedic surgery department at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a colleague, James H-C. Wang] preliminary results suggest that the usual treatment for tendinitis — taking drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen — can help reduce inflammation when the injury begins. But after inflammation is under way, they can make matters worse. [link]

Picture Source: National Library of Medicine

The best advice comes from Dr. Mininder Kocher, a sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital Boston:

His rule of thumb, Dr. Kocher said, is that if the pain is no worse after exercising than it is when the person simply walks, then the exercise ”makes a lot of sense.”

It also helps patients psychologically, he added. ”If you take athletes or active people out, they get depressed, they get wacky,” Dr. Kocher explained. [link]

Hear, hear. Now get out there and start running. All that sitting around isn’t going to get you anywhere.

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