Connective Tissue Recovery
Your body is made up of this stuff called connective tissue. Connective tissue is everywhere inside the body. It is resilient and amazing stuff. Think of it like elastic sheets and string that holds stuff together. It stretches, molds, and moves constantly as you move. However, it also provides stability and prevents your body from stretching too far, or having things get moved out of place.
Some words that come to mind: cartilage, collagen, ligaments, tendons. These words describe what makes up connective tissue. But what’s more important than defining specific structures or components of CT (connective tissue) - is how it behaves. So how does it behave? Well as stated before - it both moves but also provides stability. This means it serves an important role when our body moves in different ways. The connective tissue itself helps to guide our movement and provides feedback to our nervous system about how we are moving, and what to do while we are moving.
This is why everything seems to go wrong when we injure our connective tissue. Suddenly the stability that was provided, and the feedback that our nervous system expects, is suddenly radically different. If you’ve ever limped because you’ve hurt yourself in some way - you know exactly what this is like.
So the next question is - how does connective tissue recover? Well, it recovers like any other tissue in the body: it needs time to heal. But also like other tissues in the body, it needs the right environment. If you were to constantly scratch a healing cut on your skin, would it heal? Maybe it would, but it would take a long time, you might develop an infection, and you may also develop scars. If you clean it, dry it, and protect it: it will heal faster and more completely. But there is a major difference between skin and the deeper connective tissues (like those inside of a joint). Skin has a great supply of nutrients (blood). Connective tissue in joints does not. This means connective tissues get their nutrients in a different way.
Connective tissues rely on what is considered passive means of supply - diffusion of nutrients through the tissues. What does this mean? Skin has arteries and capillaries nearby which bring nutrients directly to the tissues. Joints, on the other hand, rely on movements and positions of the body. This “allows” nutrients to pass through the nearby tissues so that they can make contact with the tissue itself. This is why if you have a joint surgery - you will not observe blood directly inside of a joint: it’s called a synovial cavity (synovial fluid is a lubricating substance that’s slippery and cushioning to the joint: allowing for smooth movement.
So movement to an injured joint/region of connective tissue is REQUIRED to allow for optimal healing. If you want to recover from an injury: like a sprained ankle, knee, or lower back pain - you need to find a way to move it. Otherwise the injury will linger and you might not completely recover. Lingering symptoms in an injured joint are common: mostly because individuals do not find the right ways to move/encourage healing of the tissues themselves.
Last note: especially for joints, connective tissues often times need a SPECIFIC movement which recovers any kind of displacement of the connective tissue when it is injured. If you find that your pain lingers and doesn’t recover even with movement, you may need an analysis to find the correct movement. This can be performed with a mechanical analysis.