What can I expect my recovery time to be from an acute injury?
This is a very understandable question to have when we sustain an acute injury from falling, trauma, in sport or otherwise- we want to know how long to expect to feel pain and when we can get back to our full strength.
Here we will look at a rough guide as to what to expect, as well as provide some useful tips for helping your healing along. This is not an exhaustive guide of tissues susceptible to acute damage, but should give you a good sense of what to expect in most cases.
The two main variables to consider when estimating healing time for tissue injuries are the tissue type that has been damaged, and the severity of the damage sustained.
The difference in healing time between tissues is largely dictated by the blood supply. For example, muscles have a rich blood supply so can heal relatively quickly whereas ligaments have a comparatively limited blood supply, meaning they take much longer.
Your Osteopath will be able to determine which tissues are involved if you’re feeling pain in an acute injury, but imaging (X-ray or MRI) can be useful for more serious injuries to show the severity and exactly which tissues are involved.
Below are some rough guidelines to give you a sense of what to expect with each structure listed, as well as a few tips to help you along.
Muscle Injury
Grade I
Up to 3 weeks
Grade II
Approximately 3 months
Grade III
Surgery and several months rehab
Grade I = 0-5% of fibres damaged
Grade II = 5-95% of fibres damaged
Grade III = Complete tear
Muscles are the drivers of all movement in the body.
Muscle tears can be caused by overloading or overstretching, or occur when there is muscular imbalance.
Fortunately due to their rich blood supply they tend to be one of the fastest of all tissues in the body to heal.
The healing times listed are approximate and will depend on the amount of therapy and rehab committed to during the process.
You can help your recovery by:
- Gently contracting the muscle with targeted exercises to help increase blood supply
- Gently stretching the area
- Making sure to not overuse or overload the muscle
- Ensuring you get enough dietary protein (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, nuts, legumes)
- Getting enough sleep as this is the body’s healing time
- Avoiding drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes
Tendon Injury
Mild Tendinopathy
2 weeks + depending on rehab
Serious Tendinopathy
6 weeks + depending on rest and rehab
Surgery
12 weeks to 6 months
Tendons are the structures that attach muscles to bones so that the muscles can contract to move you around.
They behave in a similar way to muscles during acute injuries like tears, given that muscle tears often occur on the musculotendinous junction, so here is information relating to tendinopathy- which also covers tendinitis.
These happen by repeatedly overloading tendons through muscle contractions, causing repeated bits of damage to the tendon. Think tennis elbow or jumper’s knee.
You can help your recovery by:
- Taking a break from the activity that caused the injury
- Following an exercise program set by your Osteopath or other therapist
- Ensuring you get enough dietary protein (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, nuts, legumes)
- Getting enough sleep as this is the body’s healing time
- Avoiding drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes
Ligament Injury
Mild (Grade I)
2-4 weeks
Moderate (Grade II)
Approximately 10 weeks
Severe (Grade II)
6-12 months
Rupture (Grade III)
Potential surgery and extensive rehab
Ligaments are tough, fairly inflexible structures that hold bones to other bones, for example the medial and lateral collateral ligaments of the knee.
Because they do not contract and are full of collagen to keep their stability, they don’t like to be stretched.
They also do not get a very rich blood supply, so take longer to heal than muscles or tendons. When they are, this can cause injury.
Think a rolled ankle or twisted knee as the kind of thing that causes a ligament injury.
You can help your recovery by:
- Doing gentle cardiovascular exercise to increase blood supply around the body
- Following a personally tailored rehabilitation program set by an Osteopath or physical therapist
- Resting the area where possible
- Getting enough sleep as this is the body’s healing time
- Avoiding drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes
- Increasing dietary collagen
Important note
If you think you have sustained a ligament injury, try to avoid using anti inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen for at least 24 hours. This time can be key for your body laying down new collagen to replace what’s damaged. You can help the swelling in the first 4 days of the injury by using RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation)
Bone Injury
Bone Bruising
4-8 weeks
Fracture
6-8 weeks + Potential surgery, cast or brace
Bones are the structure that we attach everything else to, they provide structure and stability to the entire body.
They are also not very richly supplied with blood, and as quite tough structures they can take a while to heal fully.
Broadly speaking, if you fracture a bone you’ll probably know straight away- though there are some exceptions to this.
There are too many factors and variables with fractures to reasonably put in a table to give an expectation here, and they will be able to give you more personal advice at a fracture clinic if you visit a hospital after you’ve had an X-ray.
The bone in question will affect the healing time- for example a leg bone will take much longer than a smaller bone in your hand. Other factors include your age, the severity of the fracture, and whether or not you require surgery.
Bone bruising is less severe than a fracture and is characterised by pain and tenderness, swelling, hard lump and change of skin colour.
You can help your recovery by:
- Doing gentle cardiovascular exercise to increase blood supply around the body
- Keeping movement as normal as possible around the area
- When you’re allowed to weight bear again, gently loading through the healing area
- Getting enough sleep as this is the body’s healing time
- Increasing dietary protein and calcium (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, nuts, legumes, soy, leafy green vegetables)
- Avoiding drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes
All these are guidelines for approximate healing time for various injuries, so will not be exact.
There are always things we can do to help you understand and get the best, quickest recovery possible.
