This is the first installment of the 5-Part series “Myths You Were Told About Your Pain”
I bet that just about everyone has complained of pain at some point and a friend or relative or even a doctor has told you to “just rest until it feels better.”
And this piece of “medical” advice drives me crazy as it is absolute nonsense.
What that person is really saying is they don’t really know how to help you and tell you to just lay low and rest. And if it’s your doctor who told you this, they’ll probably tell you to come back in a couple weeks…using up more of your valuable time & money. And they’ll probably offer you some medications too…because they feel that they have to at least offer you something.
Sound familiar to anyone!?
If rest helped, then nobody would be in pain for more than a week or two right!?
There have even been scientific studies done on back pain that found that not only is bed rest ineffective, it actually delays recovery and can lead to worse outcomes.
And in actuality, resting or not doing anything will likely make your problem even worse (or at least harder to recover from). Taking away all activities generally does more harm than good and can cause a downward spiral of pain and decreased activity that feed into each other.
Athletic injuries tend to be complex injuries that rarely get better by just resting. And even if your pain goes away, there is a good chance your body has developed some type of compensation to get out of pain. Unfortunately, this compensation tends to put other areas of your body at an increased risk of getting injured.
Surely with all the medical professionals and treatment options available, there has to be something better to do…and there is!