PEACE and LOVE to help your sprains and strains

Rehabilitation of soft tissue injuries such as sprains and a strains is one area where research and guidance is constantly evolving.   Most of us are familiar with the rest, ice, compression, elevation or RICE healing process, however a recent study by British Journal of Sports Medicine has now introduced 2 new acronyms; PEACE and LOVE.  These two new acronyms consider the entire recovery process and not just the acute phase, which RICE, PRICE focused on.  The advice now is about enabling your body to find PEACE before the giving it some LOVE after a few days.

If you have a soft tissue injury initially find PEACE

Protect:  Restricting workloads for the first 1-3 days will reduce the risk of aggravating your injury further, however minimise the amount of rest and be guided by your pain levels to determine any levels of activity.

Elevate:  It is still recommended to elevate your injury above the heart where possible although there is little scientific evidence supporting the use of elevation.

Avoid Anti Inflammatory modalities:  Inflammation is a key stage of soft tissue recovery therefore any potential disruption to this process could impact optimal recovery.  Anti-inflammatory medications are no longer recommended during this early phase of recovery due to their impact on the inflammation process.  When considering cryotherapy (icing) the pain benefits are recognised, however care should be taken as icing an injury can potentially have a similar impact on the inflammation process.

Compression:  Use tape or elastic bandages to support and reduce swelling

Education:  If you have a soft tissue injury then speak to a manual therapist or medical professional to gain information about active recovery and how it can help.

Then after the initial few days all your body needs is a little bit of LOVE

Load:  Keeping things moving and returning to normal activity as soon as possible. Optimal loading whilst using pain as your guide will help promote the healing process.

Optimism:  Optimal recovery is shown to be closely linked to the brain and psychological factors can have an impact on recover.

Vascularisation: Starting pain-free cardiovascular activity as soon as possible after the injury will increase blood flow to the injured area to aid recovery as well as boost motivation.

Exercise:  Returning to exercise will help to restore mobility, strength and proprioception (balance) however it is important that this remains pain free in order to achieve optimal recovery during the sub-acute phase.

So if you do find yourself with a soft tissue injury give PEACE and LOVE a chance and contact me so we can work together to return you to optimum performance as quickly as possible.