Do Our Expectations Of Recovery Timelines Match Reality?

Expectations of recovery and standard tissue healing times

This has come up a lot over the last few weeks, both with my clients and members, as well as my learning sessions with my Physio Mentor. 

Often there's an expectation, from ourselves and the wider community, that after an acute injury we will "bounce back". 
That we'll "get back to normal" quickly. 

While yes, sometimes we do, but more often....our bodies need time to heal.

How MUCH time can sometimes be challenging to accept.

Especially with the external pressures of resuming our regular daily lives and work.

Having an understanding of the different timeframes in which the different tissues in our body take to heal can be an important part of managing expectations and our return to function.

For example....

• Flesh and skin wounds generally heal in 4-6 weeks,

• Bones generally take 6-12 weeks to heal and get strong,

• Muscle strain/tear healing time can vary depending on the severity from 2 weeks to 6 months,

• Nerve cells regenerate at a speed of roughly 1-3mm per day...which can put some of our longer nerves at healing times of 12+ months and beyond. 

I think that knowing this, and reminding ourselves of it, has the potential to be reassuring when things are taking longer than we would like to improve. 

Even myself, the Physio, needs to remember and remind myself of these longer timeframes as I too get caught in the "but it should be happening quicker" mind-frame. 

Yes our bodies are amazing and adaptable and literally rebuild themselves every few years.

But sometimes they also need the grace of rest...of adapting our expectations to give them time.

Time to heal.

Time to rebuild.

Flexibility along the often non-linear path forward. 


Thanks for reading.