Jason Dodd Clinic Manager and Sports Therapist – blog post produced and written by Jason Dodd Clinic Manager and Sports Therapist
Your therapist may have diagnosed you with a small tear and you have been prescribed exercises to help relieve your pain and get you back to full fitness? But, you are probably left with the question ‘well how is that going to work? If it is torn then surely I have to let it heal?’.
In the first instance here, you are correct. Tissue needs time to heal but tissue heals VERY quick! Think about when you cut your skin, the bleeding stops pretty quick in most cases. Your muscles act exactly the same. When you tear a muscle, the muscle will bleed. Depending on how big the tear is will determine how much it bleeds, the same way it does with your skin. The same way our skin hurts when we cut it, the same principles apply to muscle tears, we just cant see them. Another question we often get is ‘well if it is torn then why do I not go and get it surgically repaired?’. Well the answer is the same as why do you not get each cut on your skin surgically repaired? The healing process is the same no matter!
The key to the answer to the main heading though is that we perform exercise to promote tissue healing as a result of something called ‘Mechanotransduction’. This term is defined as ‘how cells sense physical forces and translate them into biochemical and biological responses’ It is generally broken down into 3 steps:
Mechano-coupling – this is where a physical load causes a physical change to the cells involved that make p the tissue. If you want to build muscle and get stringer you must exercise right? So therefore, if you want to build and repair muscle that is injured it would make sense to do follow the same principle.
Cell-Cell communication. Mechano-coupling focuses on the activity at one singular cell, not visible to the naked eye. Cell-Cell communication involves all of the cells within a structure communicating and passing on information. Therefore, if you can effect one cell and get it to move then you will affect all the other cells within the same area as they will pass the message on and tell each other to MOVE!
Effector response – the final stage is the response from the cells and the changes that they will make. The process is then repeated each and every time the area is stimulated.
But does this ACTUALLY work? Well according to the studies it sure does. The use of mechanotransduction in treating sports injuries has been occurring for a long time. In fact, it is sometimes known as mechanotherapy such has the success been.
Mechanotherapy has been used in the healing of muscles, ligaments and bone. In fact, one study showed that in 57 consecutive patients treated for full thickness cartilage defects of the patella and who had disabling knee pain of long duration achieved an excellent outcome in 76% of patients who received continuous passive motion (stimulating cell growth) whereas only 53% of the group achieved the same when they did not receive any treatment. The question you need to ask yourself is ‘is it worth the risk waiting and seeing if it just gets better over time or do you want to increase your chances of a full recovery?’.
Whatever your situation, the importance of this blog post is that you understand two things. The first is that no matter what, your injured or painful area SHOULD eventually get better simply based on evolution and survival of the human body, it is a pretty amazing biological phenomenon after all. And two, exercise IS good for you and WILL help your healing even though it may not make sense on paper to start with!
If you wish to speak to one of our qualified therapists to discuss anything in this blog then please feel free to get in touch with us via our website or feel free to call us and request to speak with a member of the Team.
