Hi,
I agree about this ice and antiinflatmmatory thing. I think people are using ice/antiinflamatory too much to think they are getting healing.
Ice/anti-inflam is good if you've really hurt yourself right at the start, like you ran into a brick wall with your head and you have a big painful bump on your leg, then you apply ice and take some antiinflamatory in the short term. It's more for really gross injuries, like you really snapped a muscle badly, ones where your limping around after an event. But then once it settles you should I think use more warmth.
With warmth you stimulate the healing response, which is allowing blood into the area with the healing cells. If you keep icing your foot/leg over and over, your basically in a way inhibiting any healing, sure it feels nice and fine but in a way your sort of killing the tissues since your not allowing any healing to occur. Your masking the pain over and over and inhibiting the healing, so eventually something else will happen and you won't run for 1-3 months lol.
I find if my foot is sore, it's really good to sleep with woolen socks since usually an injury starts to ache at 5am in the morning when its the coldest part of the night, ie its getting cold!
Also if you a run and feel a bit sore, its better to have a nice warm bath with something like epson salts rather then ice it. I've found I've been less injured with the warmth, with the ice the injury "goes away" and then it comes back again soon after, since you've never healed it just removed the pain.
So if its just some muscular soreness have a warm bath or spa. If its too sore to run still it just needs rest, since you've torn the muscle/ligament too much to allow movement at high rates, so there is no point running just have a swim or a bike ride instead or just rest it.
If its more boney in nature it just needs warmth but might need more rest bones take a lot longer to heal then tendons or muscles. Muscles heal the fastest, due to good blood supply, tendons take a bit longer due to poor blood supply and bones they just take time due to the tissue density. I had a stress fracture on the foot and there really was no point running I took a full month off and now its fine. But if you have sore shins or these weird pains that don't seem to go away your body is trying to tell you something, there could be inflammation from the bone below, so if you keep icing it and ignoring it eventually the bone will crack in a way where you can't walk anymore.
Anyway, that's what I've learn, and I don't use antiinflammatories or ice packs anymore and find I'm pretty much pain free now and enjoy the occasional warm bath or spa if things are aching a bit and it doesn't bother me if I can't run every single day, since sometimes its just not possible and swimming can be fun too, I'm actually quite good at it now and might try a trialathon once summer comes round again ;) I learnt with swimming too, its not really about pushing hard, its about floating right and just gliding through the water, its sort of like learning to run better, you have to not fight the water at all, like a fish they just glide through the water since they swim with the water not against it and thus you stop using heaps of effort since you get more efficient.
Antony
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 11:44 PM
Subject: Re: [RunningBarefoot] Re: pain on top of foot?
Nate Polaske wrote:
>
> I struggled for months with this pain, mostly because I didn't want to
> stop running. I took anti-inflammatories twice a day like I was told, but
> in the end, that made things a million times worse. I would take two
> weeks off, then go run again, feel fine, and then the pain would be
> horrible the next morning. They did an excellent job covering up the
> pain, but I don't think they helped the healing at all (maybe even
> hindered it). The drugs will only prolong your suffering, in my opinion.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflammation :
"Inflammation (Latin, inflammatio, to set on fire) is the complex biological
response of vascular tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged
cells, or irritants. It is a protective attempt by the organism to remove
the injurious stimuli as well as initiate the healing process for the
tissue. Inflammation is not a synonym for infection. Even in cases where
inflammation is caused by infection it is incorrect to use the terms as
synonyms: infection is caused by an exogenous pathogen, while inflammation
is the response of the organism to the pathogen."
anti-inflammatories suppress that reaction, but do not fix the cause for the
inflamation. It's a good way to releive the pain when it is such that you
cannot sleep for example. But, if a pain prevents you from doing something
(your body telling you something), taking anti-inflammatories and doing it
anyway is asking for trouble, because your putting your body through
something that hurts it, but are now death to the signals (the pain). This
is a common cause for stress fracture ; your bones are reacting to say an
added load (more mileage), and rather than wait and let them grow stronger
you suppress the pain with the anti-inflammatory and force the bones to go
beyond what they are able to.
In the "The cutting edge runner", Fitzgerald explains that different part of
your body adapts at different paces, and contrary to popular belief, the
cardiovascular system is the fastest to adapt, then the muscle, then the
bones, and finally the articulations. That's why you need to increase
mileage slowly. Remember the story of the first marathon !
--
Yves.
http://www.SollerS.ca
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