For whatever reason, you’ve picked up a bad injury. It might not be life-threatening or causing a disability, but it definitely makes life harder.
As a result, you’ve been trying to recover from the injury for a long time, but to no avail. No matter how hard you try, the injury doesn’t seem to improve. If anything, it might be getting worse!
Why has this happened? What’s making an injury get worse and worse? Based on the circumstances, any of these three things can be the reason:
#1 An incorrect diagnosis
Straight away, your failure to recover can be caused by a wrong diagnosis from a medical professional. It doesn’t sound like it should be possible, but doctors and other medics are sometimes guilty of getting things wrong.
In fact, medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the country!
While your injury isn’t life-threatening, this stat goes to show that mistakes happen in the medical realm. If you receive a misdiagnosis, all the treatment you proceed with will be incorrect.
Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that you don’t see improvements in your injury.
#2 Not enough recovery
Rest and recovery are so important when you injure yourself. In truth, they’re extremely important when following any sort of fitness routine.
Without adequate rest, your body can’t repair itself to get ready for the next day. So, when you have an injury, you need rest to help the injury heal. It’s far too common for people to rush themselves back into the swing of things before the injury has had enough time to truly recover.
You see this sort of thing in professional sports all the time. A player has a muscle injury, they try to rush themselves back after a week or so, then the same injury flares up again.
If you are hurt, give your body time to heal. Avoid doing things that will aggravate your injury. For example, if you’ve sprained your lower back, stop picking things up and carrying them around.
Get someone else to do it for you as you need the muscles to rest and repair!
#3 No rehabilitation
The best way to treat an injury is to think like a professional athlete. What do sports stars do when they get hurt? Yes, they take time out to recover, but there’s a rehabilitation period as well.
Here, they will undergo various exercises focused on strengthening muscles and treating the injury. Effectively, this is done to a) help the injury recover, and b) prevent further injuries from happening.
A typical example is a knee injury – rehab will include strengthening the muscles around the knee to make the joint more stable and less likely to succumb to the same injury. So, if you think resting your injury is all you need to do, think again. You should have a rehab plan that strengthens the damaged area and prevents further problems.
Hopefully, this helps you see why your injury isn’t improving. You must get the right diagnosis and are patient enough to rest while undergoing rehab. Then, your injury will be healed, and it shouldn’t come back.
