Your Body Takes Care of Itself: Healing & MBS
Your body is the only thing standing between you and complete recovery when you’ve injured yourself. No painkillers or medications will heal you; your body must do that. There are therapies and treatments we can do to help the healing, but in the end, your body will heal in its own time. The healing process is incredibly complex, whether your injury is a tear, strain, sprain, or inflammation, and it can take much longer than you may realize. It is very common for the complete healing process to continue for over two years, even for minor injuries.
Our body’s ability to heal is remarkable. There are four main stages of healing that a soft tissue wound will travel through to heal. We hope this explanation will help you to understand the healing process better so you can recover more quickly and completely.
The 500 Days of Healing
Day 1 to 3
When we injure ourselves, we have typically caused our skin, cartilage, tendon, ligament or muscle to tear. Immediately upon tearing, bodily fluids, such as blood, lymph, or other fluids, will leak from the broken tissue. The body springs into action quickly and will start trying to patch the leak. It will build thin membranes around the injury to stop the bleeding and begin healing.
Day 3 to 20
The gap will be left between the two sides of the wound. The body needs to fill it with new tissue to replace fluids: Type 1, generic tissue, and Type 2, stronger, specialized tissue. Type 1 tissue will patch the wound and allow nerves, capillaries, and veins to grow.
Day 15 to 200
After you have new blood flow and nerves in the areas, the Type 1 tissue is replaced by Type 2. It bonds tightly to the ends of your wound and pulls together at the edges of your injury. The tightening closes the wounded area, making it much smaller. Whether your injury is internal or external, the process is the same. The resulting tissue is at about 70% strength of the original. This stage usually occurs between 3 months to 1 year after the injury.
Day 100 to 500
Finally, after Type 2 tissue has shrunk the wound as much as possible, your body replaces Type 2 tissues with the original tissue type that was first injured. Only after the original tissue has wholly replaced the Type 2 is a wound considered fully healed. This stage can be 1 to 2 years following the injury.
Healing & Re-Injury Cycle
Stage 1 through 4 is the ideal, perfect healing cycle. Often, when an injury never seems to heal, it is because we constantly are reinjuring this area. Sometimes, we don’t allow our bodies to heal because we have no choice due to mobility requirements, work or exercise. But other times, we don’t realize we are reinjuring ourselves until it is too late. When you’re injured, your body must go through Stages 1 through 4 to recover. There is no shortcut. When you overstrain an injury before it has healed sufficiently and feel pain in the injured site, you have undone some healing processes. You may have broken the membrane (Stage 1) or torn Type 1 or Type 2 tissues (Stages 2 and 3), and your body will have to start over.
To help expedite the process, in conjunction with your body working hard, we offer Magnetic Biostimulation Therapy (MBS).
MBS can help with healing by stimulating blood flow and lymphatic activity in the healing tissue. Proper circulation is essential to new tissue growth, and circulation is affected when you’re injured and idle. By stimulating this circulation, MBS therapy can help your Type 1 and Type 2 tissues regrow as quickly as possible. The healing and re-injury process is inevitable in most people, and the goal is to heal as much as possible between the re-injuries. Minimizing the time it takes to heal reduces the amount of permanent damage to the surrounding tissue. Remember, long after the pain goes away, the healing process continues. You should continue MBS treatments even after the pain has stopped if you want to regain maximum strength in the minimum amount of time. Your chiropodist usually recommends a six- to eight-treatment program, but depending on the severity of the injury, they may recommend more treatments.
How well you heal and how quickly you heal up to you. Make the best choices by coming to your chiropodist to help with the best healing for your foot pain needs.
Book an Assessment Today!
Visit a chiropodist to discuss your injury and determine if MBS is the best treatment for you.
