Thumb Injury
Swollen? Black and Blue?
Ice is your Friend!

Have you had a thumb injury?

Torn a ligament? Ripped a tendon? Hit it with a hammer? Developed Thumb Tendonitis?

This is an educational story about how to beat the Inflammation Process when you've injured your thumb.

I got back into wrestling when I was 35. I learned a lot about aging and injury in the first few months of getting back into shape with high level workout.

One day while scrambling around with my practice partner, I felt a sharp, excruciating pain in my right thumb.

Hold your thumb out in front of you in a ‘thumb’s up’ sign. Basically, I had separated the last joint of my thumb, it had been bent to the right, the traumatic thumb injury tearing the ligament to some degree.

Immediately my thumb started to swell. After practice I got a cup and filled it with ice, then water.

Then I stuck my entire thumb into the cup for as long as I could stand it.

I carried that cup with me for the next 48 hours. I drove with it, I ate with it, I watched tv with it, I went shopping with it.

I even went out to a birthday party at a bar with that cup of ice water in my hand and my thumb in the cup.

I woke up a couple times at night and ice dipped my thumb.

The entire time my thumb was trying swell up and go black and blue.

If I hadn’t been icing, my thumb would have been three times it’s normal size and very discolored.

Thumb in till it hurt, thumb out. Repeat. Literally all day, and some of the night.

When I woke up the first morning, my thumb had swollen to about double its normal size. After getting back to icing, it went back to just a little bigger than ‘normal’.

I could FEEL the Process of Inflammation from the thumb injury doing its thing: Pushing fluid into the area .... trapping fluid in the area .... releasing chemical which enhances your sensitivity to pain.

And I could FEEL the cold of the ice water forcing circulation to happen. Pushing the extra fluid out, keeping it moving. New blood rushing in when removing my thumb from the cold.

I kept ice dipping my thumb all that day, fighting my body's mechanism that was trying to give me a swollen thumb.

When I woke up the second morning, the Inflammation Cycle had run it's course.

There was no swelling, no black and blue, no extra tenderness.

I was left with only the actual ligament injury on the side of my thumb joint, as opposed to all the swelling and pain that automatically came with it.

Healing Fast From Thumb Injury

I probably took two months off my healing time from this thumb injury, because my body no longer had to deal with all the side effects of injury...the swelling and pain enhancing chemical, and all the downsides that come with.

So whether you have a small tweak or a significant tendon/ligament injury or even a ‘pulled muscle’, Ice Is Your Friend.

The injury isn't necessarily the problem. It's the body's RESPONSE to the injury that you REALLY want to keep in check.

Injuries to the thumb are not different than any other kind of injury. They all have the same pattern of response, and they all respond to the same treatment. Thumbs are just easy to get into a cup of ice water.

If you have a new thumb injury, or a newly injured finger(s), you can combat and defeat the Inflammation Process. If you have an older thumb injury and still have swelling and/or bruising/discoloration, you may have a state of chronic inflammation around the injury. You can Ice Dip and kick out the inflammation, swelling, bruising, and pain.

If you can overcome the downsides of the Inflammation Reaction with Ice Dipping, or some other form of cold, you can save yourself days, weeks, even months of pain and discomfort.

It’s part of outsmarting your injury. Treating thumb injuries isn't rocket science. You can heal fast, but you have to do the RIGHT self care treatment the RIGHT way.

Try it and see what happens.

Remember...Ice is your Friend.

It's also a great way to combat Trigger Thumb.

Click here for a longer conversation about How To Reduce Inflammation.

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