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Took an aspen tree to the quadricep yesterday, at first thought I broke my femur. Went to the doc, and I'm stretching, icing, and he gave me prescription anti-inflammatory to combat calcium deposits forming.
question is:
at what point do I switch to heat?
Sidelined during the best storm cycle of the year = :cussing:
3-4 days or when the swelling as gone down... someone else chime in here if they know something i dont know...
I'd switch to heat at 48 hours...
At 48 hours you can start doing hot-cold, to flush your system, it will also help keep stuff moving out of there, calcium build up, swelling, any remaining lactic acid... and you feel great after too! If you can handle the cold.. I recommend doing 2-5 minutes hot, then 2-5 minutes cold, you can either stay in the cold shower or snow for a minimum, 1.5 minutes, then sit in a chair, and wait out the remainder of the time, before going hot again if you can't take the entire time haha.
Don't use cold for more than 20 minutes at a time or you will be doing nothing, in fact your vessels will start to dilate after 20 minutes of cold. The body is smart like that. 20 on, 20 off.
Get some woodlock oil (Zheng Gu Shui) or dit da jao and put it on now. We use this stuff in my kung fu class after sparring or the wooden dummy form and it works fucking wonders on deep bruises. Fuck the western medicine idea to minimize swelling and go directly for these oils. Icing just dulls the pain and delays the healing. Trust me, you'll be back up in half the time.
http://www.wle.com//store/healing.html
edit: beat the hell out of this thing for an hour a day and you'll get some nasty bruises
http://www.ukwingchun.com/assets/pho...%20Sau%201.jpg
You might be able to find it at a local martial arts school or chinese grocer as well.
Be EXTRA careful you don't have a slight tear before stretching it. I suffered the same type of injury playing no pad full tackle football. Doctor told me to use heat and stretch it out not thinking it was torn. After a few days it was getting worse and worse. Went to a different doctor and found ouy it was torn and I was making it worse. Ended up on crutches for a month and 2 months physical therapy.
48-72 hrs of ice no matter what. and the most important thing is to maintain ROM as long as you don't have a tear like Castro's mentioned.
If you are pretty sure you don't habe a tear ice with the knee in flexion while lying on your back. AFter 3-4 days you can move to heat/war, soaks while bending the knee.
Keep some compression on it too.
Don't worry about it calcifying. That would not show up for at least 6 weeks. And if it does there isn't anything you are going to do about it.
I just went through the whole calcification in my quad thing and can't say i want to go through it again. I had a very deep bruise in my thigh last september and around december i started getting some clicking in my thigh when doing sprints. Thought i re-aggravated it so I laid low for a couple weeks and it ended up being worse. Went to some pt for a few weeks of ultrasound, stim, and (painful) deep tissue massage and it's all good again.