Heal Injuries Faster

Toss out the old advice that rest is the best recovery strategy

- BY LYDIA DENWORTH

AFTER A SLIP ON THE ICE, a sports injury, even surgery, most people's instinct is to rest what hurts. “When you have an acute injury, your body is sending signals through the peripheral and central nervous systems and the immune system to say, hold on, I need to stop doing this so we can allow the tissue to heal,” says Ericka Merriwether, a physical therapist and pain researcher at New York University. Rest, after all, is the first part of the familiar RICE therapy, which stands for “rest, ice, compression and elevation.”

But experts no longer believe RICE is the best strategy for recovery. They especially quibble with the first step: rest. Even Gabe Mirkin, the sports medicine physician who coined the RICE acronym in 1978, has acknowledged that newer evidence suggests other approaches are more effective.

Resting an injury can alleviate pain and may be necessary in the short term, especially for injuries such as muscle tears, which might be exacerbated by movement. In most cases, however, limiting movement does not promote healing. In fact, immobilization causes muscles to weaken and lose stability. An injured body part that is immobilized for too long is more likely to move from acute to chronic pain (that is, pain that lasts more than three months).