Everyone’s pain experience will be different as they recover from a back injury. Although the pain experience will be different, recovery follows the same principles no matter who you are – barring trauma , surgeries , underlying diseases or psychological interference.
In rehab, timing is everything and failure to follow the proper guidelines could cause more inflammation and prolonged exposure to pain leading to poorer outcomes. The Inflammation, proliferation and remodeling phases reflect the healing stages of all biological tissue. The stages typically overlap and there is no absolute or hard transition from one to the other and each stage builds on the previous stage.
It’s important to understand there is significant individual variability within each stage due to many factors that are occurring simultaneously. For instance diabetes can affect healing times. Someone’s recovery will be straight forward and others may be on a winding path. Some individuals will progress faster than others depending on their injury, experience with pain, mindset ,etc.
A key to remember: the body was designed to heal itself.
Rehabbing can be difficult sometimes and you want to know that you are addressing everything possible to optimize healing.
Some issues to note on this slide, the big one that stands out is diabetes or better put ‘uncontrolled blood sugar’. High circulating blood sugar that is persistent can wreak havoc on tissues.
Another point of nutrition is making sure you have adequate intake of vital micro and macro nutrients and protein BUT also restricting intake of processed foods.
The other factors that are rarely discussed but also can significantly affect recovery are loads applied to the tissues and psychological factors. If the load is greater than your capacity to heal, then there will be a delay. Likewise if there are psychological barriers then healing could also be delayed.