I've had better days
So I was having a moderately good day--I accomplished lots of things I'd been avoiding at work today, so I was rewarding myself by going to a new ice cream shop, pondering whether or not to try the avocado flavor, when I misjudged the height of a curb and tripped and fell in a spectacular and extremely painful fashion. (The plus side to living in a small California town--a ridiculous number of people rushed to my aid. I once sprained an ankle in St. Mark's place in NYC and while I actually tend to think New Yorkers are extremely friendly, that is not a place to have an injury if you want assistance).
Anyway, I seem to be mainly ok outside of very sore and scraped hands and elbows, but I banged one of my knees up pretty badly. I'm hoping it's not anything serious--I was able to limp the quarter mile home, so it's definitely not broken--but as I sit here icing and elevating and all that good jazz, I started wondering why exactly you are supposed to use the RICE method. I mean, I know it prevents swelling, but now that we are so focused on our bodies' natural healing processes etc., it makes me wonder if swelling (increased bloodflow, all that jazz) isn't nature's way of healing things, so why do we try to stop it? Is it just for pain reasons that we do the RICE thing? Faster mobility?
Anyway, I seem to be mainly ok outside of very sore and scraped hands and elbows, but I banged one of my knees up pretty badly. I'm hoping it's not anything serious--I was able to limp the quarter mile home, so it's definitely not broken--but as I sit here icing and elevating and all that good jazz, I started wondering why exactly you are supposed to use the RICE method. I mean, I know it prevents swelling, but now that we are so focused on our bodies' natural healing processes etc., it makes me wonder if swelling (increased bloodflow, all that jazz) isn't nature's way of healing things, so why do we try to stop it? Is it just for pain reasons that we do the RICE thing? Faster mobility?