I’ve heard it over and over during my career as a sports physical therapist. How fast can you get me better? Or how long is this going to take to resolve? We live in a world where we want things to be instant, however, the reality is we need to adjust our expectations on improving our health and wellness.
Recovering from injury depends on many factors.
First and foremost, the severity of the injury. The more severe, the longer we can expect for our recovery to take. A good example of this is an ankle sprain. A grade one (overstretch of ligaments) can take 2-4 weeks to recover. A grade 3 (full rupture of ligaments) can take 3 months or longer. Knowing the severity of the injury can help set expectations of how fast you can expect to see and feel improvement.
A more complicated scenario is when I see a patient who has dealt with a nagging minor injury that keeps recurring. In my practice, I often see individuals who come to me and say “I’ve always had shoulder issues.” Usually they get to my office because of a new onset of shoulder discomfort but their history is lengthy with multiple bouts of shoulder pain and restriction in activity. They may of even tried PT but been unsuccessful in the past. The more often these bouts of irritation occur, the more frustrating they can be to resolve. What it usually means is that the individual is not ever fully resolving their underlying issue and returning too soon to activity that irritates the cause of their problems. These tiny little fires they keep partially putting out can end up becoming one massive flame if they are not too careful. Rather than only partially putting out the fire, we need to find the source and douse it with the appropriate treatment to avoid the fire spreading.
We have all heard the phrase “you get out of it, what you put into it.”
That phrase holds very true in the world of injury recovery and physical therapy. As your physical therapist I can help with symptom relief and provide you with tools to rebuild and address underlying causes. What I cannot do is put in the work for you. No amount of manual therapy and discussion of exercise is going to substitute for a patient dedicating time to implement the treatment plan we have educated them on. As a patient, if you are not willing to put in the work, you will fail at physical therapy.
When it comes to our bodies, we could all do better to understand that things take time. And if you find those quick fixes, just know that often this does not equal full resolution. Healing is a continuum and there are certain processes in our body we are not in control of speeding up. As your physical therapist, I am here to guide the way! My role is to help promote healing all while progressing you back to your desired activity of choice. This process starts by sitting down and us discussing expectation for recovery on day one!
Similarly, our nutrition journey also takes time and energy in order for us to reach our goals.
Our bodies have been taking in nutrients from before we were born! What our mothers were eating, drinking, what supplements they were taking, their exercise routine, stress levels, and so much more all affect our physiology.
When we are a baby and a fast growing little one, what we were fed is incredibly important!
We might not have control over what we were fed, but it is important to note in the conversation of nutrition changes. People expect their body to change in a matter of months, when your body has been functioning a certain way for (most likely) decades, with ingesting what it considers normal.
When we attempt to change what we eat, it’s never perfect. It’s about changing little habits, making small decisions that add up to larger changes. Even little decisions such as choosing water over tea or soda, asking for a salad instead of fries, picking vegetables instead of mashed potatoes as a side. They all add up if you continue making the hard decisions, one day you will look back and be shocked at your progress in your choice!
When we begin to develop the proper habits that align with our goals, then change will naturally occur.
If we yo-yo diet, expect to eat “healthy” for one week and then go back to eating poorly, nothing will change. Everyone wants change without having to work for it. If you were to drastically change your diet in one day, you would probably hate it, it wouldn’t be sustainable, and you would default back to what is comfortable.
Our bodies were created to adapt. Whatever we feed it, both mentally and physically, it will adapt to it. So, as “boring” as it might seem to focus on the small things, it’s what will bring lasting and sustainable change.
Let us know if this resonates with you, if you need help creating realistic expectations, or if you have a personal story you want to share! Click our email icon or instagram icon below to reach out!
