Isn’t inflammation the body’s way of rush blood to areas to facilitate their healing? So why are anti inflammatorys used so much, shouldn’t they slow down recovery?
Not neccessarily.
It’s a good natural defense mechanism. It tends to immobilize joints and it does probably speed healing a bit. However, people today tend to compensate with things like splints and immobilization and so forth.
Plus, a lot of inflammation is the body in emergency mode for things which aren’t needed. It’s not perfect.
I was talking to my physical therapist (ACL reconstruction) yesterday, and she described the difference between swelling and inflammation. Swelling is a buildup of blood and/or other liquids in an area during healing (and to partially immobilize the joint), while inflammation is irritated soft tissue. My knee is still swollen from the surgery six weeks ago, but most of the inflammation seems to be gone.
On the other hand, antiinflammatories can, in fact, slow down the recovery process. I’ve begged my surgeon for the last month to get him to let me take some IBs (ibuprofen), but he won’t let me, because it’ll slow the healing of the bone graft. Also, it won’t help much, since there’s more swelling than inflammation.
IANAD, blah blah blah, this is just what I understand from the conversations I’ve had with my PT and doc in the past month or so.
There are numerous disorders brought about by uncontrolled/overactive/disseminated inflammation. Anti-inflammatories are great for treating those. The other thing is that many of the unpleasant symptoms associated with a disorder may be entirely due to the inflammatory response to it. By suppressing some of the inflammatory response, you can greatly improve quality of life, while not suppressing the recovery process too much. You’ve got to be careful, though.