Suffer a Sports Injury? 7 Natural Approaches to Healing

Sports injuries are not only painful, but they can sideline you from ever playing again. Treating a torn tendon is critical. In fact, if they are not treated properly or heal correctly, sports injuries can lead to lifelong pain and body issues. An effective road to recovery can help alleviate pain, restore movement, and even return you to the field — better than ever.

Here are 5 therapies you might consider to help heal from a sports injury. Many can be done at home — and all are non-invasive approaches that don’t require extensive surgeries or potentially addictive pain medications.

Rest

The first thing we prescribe is rest. Stop your activity immediately and rest as much as possible for the first two days. Avoid putting any weight on the injured area for at least 48 hours. Take a break from all activity to allow the area to heal.

Hot Compress

While many will tell you to ice the afflicted area, we strongly suggest a warm compress instead. This will help reduce swelling, prevent pain, and accelerate healing.

Compression

Wrap the affected area with an elastic medical bandage to reduce swelling and encourage delivery of new nutrients to the area. You want the bandage to be tight but not enough so much as to prevent blood flow. If your skin turns blue, you feel numbing, or the area feels cold, loosen the bandage.

Elevation

Raise the affected limb so it is higher than the heart. This will help reduce pain, throbbing, and swelling. A pillow works great for elevation and will allow you to rest the area to bring pain relief.

See a Doctor for a Diagnosis

Minor pains and sprains should improve after about two weeks. If you continue to experience pain, you’ll want to see a doctor for a full diagnosis.

A doctor will conduct a thorough clinical examination and imaging (x-rays/scans) to make a diagnosis and determine if you have a torn tendon that needs to be treated.

PRP Therapy for Sports Injuries

PRP therapy can be effective at treating a torn tendon. This involves injecting Platelet-rich plasma into the affected area. These platelets contain growth factors that effectively enhance or speed up healing. We harvest the platelets from your own blood that are placed into a spinning machine to concentrate the platelets.

PRP injections have helped athletes like Tiger Woods and Hines Ward accelerate healing time when it comes to treating torn tendons.

Trigger Point Injection Therapy

Trigger point injection therapy is another alternative approach to treat sports injuries. Muscle pain often results from an overused or continually stressed muscle. These muscles form contracted knots, causing pain or tightness in areas known as trigger points.

Trigger point injection therapy targets these trigger points to bring about pain relief. It can relieve knotted muscles that are the result of sports injuries.

We first locate the trigger point by hand. We’ll then clean the injection site with an antiseptic. A numbing spray is applied to relieve the pain of the needle. We then inject a needle containing saline, a local anesthetic, and may include a steroid medication (e.g., cortisone) into the trigger point. This will help relieve pain and reverse inflammation.