I spent the majority of last summer in a cast – from the thumb to the bicep size cast. I fell off my bike on June 1 and broke my elbow… or more accurately, broke my radio head. Fun right? No. I made the best of the situation but, needless to say, it was a pretty awful summer. Just imagine 100-degree weather, a sweaty cast, and me trying to hike through Colorado. Well anyways, if only I knew the one medicine I needed to heal was positive visualization, my elbow would have healed a lot faster, or so this recent study says.
Researchers at Ohio Musculoskeletal and Neurological Institute (OMNI) at Ohio University found that a person’s mind can be the key component to healing before and after getting a cast-off to build strength back. The researchers tested 29 individuals who wore casts from just below their elbow to their thumb, and 15 individuals who were cast-less to act as the controlled group. Out of the 29 casted individuals, 14 were asked to “regularly perform an imagery exercise, imagining they were intensely contracting their wrist for five seconds and then resting for five seconds,” according to the study. The remaining individuals did no imagery exercises.
According to the study:
At the end of the four-week experiment, both groups who wore casts had lost strength in their immobilized limbs when compared to the control group. But the group that performed mental imagery exercises lost 50% less strength than the non-imaginative group (24 percent vs. 45 percent, respectively). The nervous system’s ability to fully activate the muscle (called “voluntary activation” or VA) also rebounded more quickly in the imagery group compared to the non-imagery group.
So next time you find yourself in a cast, imagine getting better and hopefully, your limbs will respond. And if that doesn’t work, physical therapy, wine, and Norco worked for me.
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