Consequences of Physical Inactivity on Your Body
Physical inactivity (also called immobilization) means the stillness of the whole body or a part of it. Most often this situation arises after a severe illness or surgery when you are unable to move. It is similar when a limb cannot be moved because of a fracture or injury. Many choose “immobility” voluntarily. A sedentary lifestyle (sitting at work, in the car, in front of the TV) can have consequences just as serious as the disease that caused the inactivity.
A sedentary lifestyle reduces your muscle strength, decreases joint range of motion, and stiffens the ligaments — directly causing muscle and joint pain. It also increases the risk of developing osteoporosis. However, you can change and improve this — just start exercising regularly.
The situation is different when illness forces you to be inactive! When an accident or surgery confines you to bed or a broken limb is put in a cast.
Consequences of immobilization
By immobilization understand that your movement is persistently limited or impossible. You may have been immobilized to aid healing (e.g. a cast for a fracture), or after surgery you may not be allowed to put weight on the area. What these have in common is that muscle movement stops and a series of unfavorable processes begin.
- Edema (fluid accumulation) develops.
- The increase of interstitial fluid makes connective tissue harder and stiffer.
- Blood circulation worsens, so the waste products and toxins generated by the disease are not removed.
- An unmoved muscle quickly loses mass and strength because the body does not maintain unused muscle mass. Atrophy (muscle wasting) can already cause several centimeters of muscle circumference loss within 2–3 weeks.
- Muscles and ligaments can adhere to each other, which further worsens joint range of motion.
Avoid complete immobilization as much as possible!
Although in many cases immobilization is unavoidable, act consciously to avoid its harmful effects! If full rest is not absolutely necessary, do not remain inactive. Even with a cast try to move and stay active! After surgery do not just "sink into the bed".
Move, exercise and use regularly those body parts and muscles that are not affected by the surgery or required immobilization.
Manual therapy
Various manual therapy methods (fascia therapy, flossing, FDM, massage, etc.) help loosen adhered tissues, break up abnormal adhesions in the connective tissues, and stimulate blood circulation. This improves the removal of waste products, the flow of interstitial fluid, and eliminates edema.
Physiotherapy
Start physiotherapy as soon as possible after surgery or fracture! Early mobilization plays a crucial role in the speed of rehabilitation. Be sure to ask a physiotherapist for help on how to safely and properly mobilize your muscles. Their expertise ensures you proceed in small steps at the right pace, avoiding overdoing it or causing harm to yourself!
Regeneration requires time and lots of practice! A physiotherapist may visit you in the hospital once a day for only 5–10 minutes. These visits are only to show you what to do!
Once they leave, during the rest of the day perform the demonstrated set of movements hourly. You will improve only if you stick to this!
Ten minutes of physiotherapy per day will certainly not improve your physical condition to any meaningful extent.
Think about it: if 10 minutes of daily physiotherapy were enough to regain strength quickly, athletes would prepare for the Olympics with physiotherapy rather than years of frequent, high-load, sweaty, weight-bearing training!
Again: the condition and strength of muscles can only be improved by movement. The more often you do physiotherapy during the day, the faster you can improve. It depends only on you how much you do to regain your strength. No one else can re-strengthen YOUR muscles—only YOU can.
If you understand this, you have already started on the right path.
How can a relative help?
By regularly assisting with the exercises. Initially it may even be necessary to help physically, e.g. assisting the patient to sit up in bed — lie back down and then sit up again. Only these repeated exercises have a strengthening effect. A single daily sit-up has none.
In the average Hungarian hospital, nurses do not have time to thoroughly and repeatedly mobilize the patient.
However, a relative can visit several times a day and help the patient sit up, stand up, walk along the ward a little, rest, and then repeat this multiple times a day. Without this the patient will "become bedbound," which gradually leads to increasingly worse condition.
If the patient can be discharged home, the real rehabilitation process begins. Regaining strength can take many months! The support and help of relatives is very important in this.
Muscle stimulation
Often after surgery you cannot move the affected joint for days. Rehabilitation determines how quickly you can return to everyday life. To do this you must preserve your muscle strength and mass. Daily exercises and devices that help accelerate the process are key.
To preserve muscle mass and strength, use a muscle stimulation device. During muscle stimulation the device delivers electrical impulses to the treated muscle, causing muscle contractions — just like during exercise. The difference is that with a stimulator the desired effect can be achieved in a shorter time. The advantage of a stimulator is that it does not load the joints.
The other use of muscle stimulation is to re-strengthen muscles weakened by prolonged illness. As mentioned earlier, continuous physical activity is most important. With weakened muscles this can be very difficult and the recovery of strength can be slow.
The muscle stimulator speeds up the recovery of muscle strength (but does not replace physiotherapy). What physiotherapy alone may take 6–8 months to achieve can be reached in 2–3 months when combined with a stimulator. Muscle stimulation treatment should be applied to the larger muscle groups involved in sitting up from bed, standing up and walking, such as the shoulders and upper arms, abdomen and trunk, buttocks and thighs.
A muscle stimulation device suitable for this purpose should have programs for treating muscle wasting and building muscle mass, and be able to treat large areas and multiple muscle groups at once. 4-channel devices may be appropriate.
Examples include the Elite, Elite150, Genesy 300 Pro, Premium 400, Genesy 600, Genesy 1500, Genesy 3000, Runner Pro, Triathlon Pro, Soccer Pro, Cycling Pro devices. Click here to learn more about these devices.
Other physiotherapy modalities
To accelerate healing of the injured area you can also use softlaser therapy and ultrasound therapy. You can read the details by clicking the links.
In summary: strive to move and accelerate healing even when immobilization is unavoidable. Learn the appropriate exercises from a physiotherapist and repeat them as often as possible. Use muscle stimulation, softlaser and ultrasound to speed up recovery.
