Sitting here in agony this morning got me thinking about the acronym RICE which is still the standard treatment for injuries.
I dislocated my knee twice last night and I've done it so many times I couldn't even guess how many times it's happened. Every ligament in my knee has been completely severed and so are several hamstring tendons, if I listened to the medical establishment I would have been sitting here in a wheelchair.
For the first few years I used the standard RICE philosophy and it pretty well always took five days to a week before I could walk on it properly again. But then because I hated the feeling of ice & it happened in mid winter one time I thought I'd forego the ice & I was walking again in two days. So now I never use RICE and it always heals faster, sometimes I'm back on my feet the next day.
Dr Gabe Mirkin - the doctor who coined the acronym RICE when he wrote his sports medicine book in 1978 has now mostly recanted what he wrote about icing injuries but won't totally let it go and still recommends it to reduce pain. Pain is there for a reason, so we don't use the injured part too soon and make it worse, so I believe he's full of crap there too.
Several large scale studies have shown quite conclusively that it's not helpful, but yet everyone persists in using RICE.
On Dr Gabe's own website he even explains the mechanisms of how ice delays healing but conversely still recommends it and wrapping it in a compression bandage. All the compression bandage does is impede the normal flow of growth factors and lymph, so I believe that's bullshit too
Most people have the acronym so deeply implanted into their consciousness that they can't even accept the possibility that it could be the wrong approach. We all see injured sports stars on TV icing their injuries and accept it as "medical gospel" but there are a lot of studies that show it's not helpful at all and even delays healing, but almost everyone still uses it. To me it's like some of the other bullshit brought to us by the medical establishment in the past like mercury or blood letting. A case of doctors thinking they can heal body better than our own bodies can.
Anyway without using RICE I intend to back training in less than three days. I'll start today with light mobility work and then start applying my own homemade liniment (dit da jao).
