Swelling Part II

Factual Questions
1

I may have gotten ahead of myself in the last thread. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=236948

I seem to be a little bit confused with the whole swelling mechanism in our bodies… let me try to explain to you why I am confused, maybe you can help.

I am told that swelling is the bodies’ way of bringing needed materials to the injury site. So far so good.

I also understand that each and every time a body gets injured, the swelling is not always optimized for optimal healing and recovery. Ok, fair enough.

I know from just being alive that almost everyone puts cold on a every single swelling injury, supposedly to relieve the swelling, as if the swelling was evil and a hindrance to recovery. (So, if everyone does it, I should too, right???)

I was just presented with the astounding idea that the only purpose why everyone in the world cools the injured area is just to alleviate the pain. This I believe is false, isn’t it?

So, the obvious question: should we put cold on every swelling injury, or just the ones that have “excessive” swelling (pain issues aside)?

What about surgery? When I had knee surgery, my knee needed to be drained twice because there was simply too much blood in the area? I am sure this happens with almost every knee arthroscopy. The doc had me on cold for a week and a half all day and night long. So what gives in the instance of surgery? Why does our body go so nuts with surgery? Because it’s such an unnatural, invasive procedure?

**Basically, I just want to know WHEN to put cold on an injury, and WHY I should or should NOT do it on any given injury. In addition, I am perplexed that such a common process as swelling can get so fouled up and out of control. No other common biological process gets this screwed up and self-debilitating across the board, does it? **

So, an educated commentary on our crappy swelling mechanism would be nice too.

Thanks.

2

As a rule of thumb, ice the swelling when it seems excessive, when it’s really painful, or when a doctor tells you to. As has already been pointed out, your immune system doesn’t always produce the optimal results on its own, so use a little discretion and help it along.

With regard to other ‘common processes’ that get out of control, I can think of at least two offhand: fever and sweating. Contrary to popular opinion, fever isn’t the result of an infection, but an immunological response. Many viruses replicate at a reduced rate at higher temperatures, so to inhibit their reproduction your body elevates its temperature. Great, so far as it goes. But your body only has a limited range of temperatures it can withstand, and your normal temperature is close to the upper limit. So increasing your internal temperature can damage you, and in cases where the body drastically increases temp, the fever itself may be more dangerous than the infection.

Sweating is a mechanism for maintaining body temperature via evaporative cooling. The thing of it is, it won’t stop just because you’ve used up a lot of liquid - it’s set to keep you cool, and keep you cool it will, even at the cost of extreme dehydration. If you go outside on a hot day (just a normal hot day, not a desert or the like), and you don’t drink anything, then eventually you’ll succomb not to the temperature, but to dehydration.

3

firx: Very good points, thanks for bringing up those examples of biological “goofs”. Very interesting to see what seems like an all-knowing, clever beast such as the human body sort of fumble around when the going gets tough.