Inflammation & Swelling

Are swelling and inflammation holding you back? 

Do sore and swollen joints stop you from doing the things you love? This is an important article that might get you thinking differently about swelling and inflammation. 

Pain and discomfort associated with inflammation and swelling can be an extremely unpleasant experience, and without a good understanding of why the process is happening, it is common that people will quickly rush to try and stop it from occurring. This can actually impact on the body’s amazing ability to heal itself and produce a continuous cycle of swelling and inflammation. It can also lead to a reliance on passive therapies and take control away from people participating in the lives they want to live.

However, through gaining a better understanding as to why inflammation and swelling happen, you are better enabled to provide your body with the best possible environment for this process to occur, you can better understand when swelling might not be an ideal result and learn to better manage these situations with active approaches that empower you to continue doing everything you love. 

Swelling is often an integral part of the body’s healing mechanisms and the focus doesn’t always need to be on how we can reduce and reverse this process. However, when a cycle of swelling continues to occur past the usual time frame for tissues to heal following injury, causing unnecessary pain and suffering, we might like to do something about it.

To get on top of your swelling & inflammation, it is important to first understand why the body is responding this way, here are 3 facts to help you get started:

• Swelling is one of the 5 signs of inflammation, the other four being redness, pain, heat and loss of function. Inflammation can occur both immediately in response to things such as injury, infection or damage, or over a longer period of time which is called chronic inflammation. An example of an immediate response is a sprained ankle which is painful and swollen, whereas a more chronic example might be swelling around the knee which has not subsided long after an injury has healed. 
• Regular exercise has shown to provide an anti-inflammatory effect to the body through the release of particular chemicals and proteins that act both to reduce inflammation and regulate the number of inflammatory cells in the body. (Gleeson et al. 2011)
• The calf muscles can act like a pump to help return blood to the heart and keep the fluid that causes swelling from building up in the legs. Stretching and exercising the calf muscles can be an excellent way to improve circulation and assist with chronic swelling. 
  

Now that you know a little more about swelling and inflammation, you can be confident that it will not be something to hold you back from long-term success. However, having someone to help you navigate the tricky journey from where you are now to where you want to be is an important step. That is where our Physiotherapy and Exercise Physiology team can help to guide you through an appropriate treatment and exercise program to help you have the best possible quality of life. 

Give us a call today on 8682 6665, or alternatively, click on 'book now' below to book your appointment online.