a vet estimated that ~50% of animals that he treats would have recovered fine without his involvement
Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
171–180 of 342 posts
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#172I broke my ankle 15 weeks ago, and decided to weight bear early against the advice of my doctors. In my experience, it caused me no issues and prevented my calf from atrophying further. My foot was also super tight, and I can't imagine that would have gotten better by staying off it. I think a lot of medical advice is based on what doesn't go wrong, rather than what might give the best outcome. I'm sure there are doc…
Primum non nocere
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the amount of injuries related to mountain biking, is there some specific insurance needed for it? It seems one of those "net-negative for the society activities", like trampolines.
I don't know that "normal" mountain biking is any worse than cycling in general, or sports like tackle football. A lot of the injury risk when mountain biking is reasonably easily mitigated by controlling your speed and walking the bike through terrain that's above your skill level. There was a report out of British Columbia a few months ago about injury rates, and they were high, but BC is also a major downhill trai…
> A lot of the injury risk when mountain biking is reasonably easily mitigated by controlling your speed and walking the bike through terrain that's above your skill level. There was a report out of British Columbia a few months ago about injury rates, and they were high, but BC is also a major downhill trail region.
Yeah, with downhill biking, “controlling your speed” means making sure you go fast enough to land the jump on the intended downslope. Go too slow and you’ll land wrong.
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#174In Germany this is already common knowledge. I had a fractured radial head. It gets fixiated for 2 weeks (to let the bones heal) and than the fixture gets removed and you need to move it , you also get therapy sessions for that.
Of course this depends on the fracture degree , but it’s really uncommon to have a fixture for more than a few weeks since it makes it really hard at a certain age to still move it 100%
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#175I broke an arm and the emergency room couldn't see it on the x-ray and gave me a sling to wear. A couple days later I got to see an actual bone doctor and he got the x-ray and immediately pointed to the fracture. What surprised me was that he said not to use the sling, because it would lose my range of motion. "Keep moving your arm, use the entire range of motion, and let pain be your guide."
Frozen shoulder isn't fun. I had it for almost 2 years - from onset to the point where my shoulder mobility was pretty much back to normal. That's probably why your doc recommended to keep the arm in motion.
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#176If anyone's heard of RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) for healing joints, the new guidance is called POLICE: Protect, Optimal Load, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. The key differences being Protect and Optimal Load, meaning don't re-injure it and expose it to some level of weight-bearing or usage.
The guy who termed RICE (Gabe Mirkin) later came out and said he made a mistake. Specifically with the "Ice" part (and partially with Rest). See: https://drmirkin.com/fitness/why-ice-delays-recovery.html
IIRC the underlying assumption was that you should be reducing inflammation (RICE is almost all about reducing inflammation). Since then, we've learned that inflammation is a good thing, and helps things heal faster.
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#177The pathology for broken collar bones was changing right as I took up mountain biking, and subsequently shattered my collarbone. It was hotly debated at the hospital, if my specific case should be operated on or not. Each time I had a checkup, one doctor would say "wait and see" while the other was saying "I can't believe we didn't operate on this". At any rate, the outcome was as good as if they had operated on it,…
I shattered my collarbone - and I do mean shattered, ~8 pieces - in a mountain bike crash September 2023. I went over the bars after the back wheel of my hardtail caught a berm. Landed on my head and shoulder and compressed it laterally inwards by about 2 inches. Even with this mess, it was hotly debated for around two weeks whether I needed surgery. A good chunk of my collarbone was trying to push through my skin an…
Functional outcomes seem similar, trough we have a increased rate of malunion, delayed or non-union with nonoperative treatment. We usually indicate surgery if it's an active patient.
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#178The pathology for broken collar bones was changing right as I took up mountain biking, and subsequently shattered my collarbone. It was hotly debated at the hospital, if my specific case should be operated on or not. Each time I had a checkup, one doctor would say "wait and see" while the other was saying "I can't believe we didn't operate on this". At any rate, the outcome was as good as if they had operated on it,…
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Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#179if you dont use it... you might lose it...
Re: Broken legs and ankles heal better if you walk on them within weeks
#180I wonder if this phenomenon was part of the reason why Küntscher's intramedullary nailing was so effective at speeding up the recovery from broken legs.