Alright, imagine your body is like a big waterpark with water tubes running everywhere—that water is your blood.
Now pretend you scrape your knee. Your body sends extra water (blood) to help fix it, but sometimes it sends too much, and the area gets all puffy and swollen.
If your leg is hanging down, gravity makes more water stay there, like a puddle at the bottom of a slide.
But if you lift your leg higher than your heart, gravity helps pull the extra water back up the tubes—so the swelling goes down faster and your leg feels better sooner.
So lifting it is like tipping the slide backward—it helps the water drain out.
Blood carries the nutrients and cells that need to get to an injury spot. If the area is below the heart, the blood is going “downhill” and it will be easier to get those nutrients there, and harder for them to escape and be wasted in uninjured tissue. If the area is above the heart, the blood is going “uphill” and the heart has to work harder to keep it up there, and it naturally drains away more easily.
So if inflammation is a serious problem, go ahead and elevate and ice… but that is slowing down the healing process in exchange for comfort.
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Alright, imagine your body is like a big waterpark with water tubes running everywhere—that water is your blood.
Now pretend you scrape your knee. Your body sends extra water (blood) to help fix it, but sometimes it sends too much, and the area gets all puffy and swollen.
If your leg is hanging down, gravity makes more water stay there, like a puddle at the bottom of a slide.
But if you lift your leg higher than your heart, gravity helps pull the extra water back up the tubes—so the swelling goes down faster and your leg feels better sooner.
So lifting it is like tipping the slide backward—it helps the water drain out.
Blood carries the nutrients and cells that need to get to an injury spot. If the area is below the heart, the blood is going “downhill” and it will be easier to get those nutrients there, and harder for them to escape and be wasted in uninjured tissue. If the area is above the heart, the blood is going “uphill” and the heart has to work harder to keep it up there, and it naturally drains away more easily.
So if inflammation is a serious problem, go ahead and elevate and ice… but that is slowing down the healing process in exchange for comfort.