Don’t push through the pain

Posted on 12 November 2014

Feeling a slight injury niggle? Reckon you can simply ’push through the pain’? Whether you’re a runner or a rugby player, you’re about to make a huge mistake, warns Dr Dirk Nell, orthopaedic surgeon at Mediclinic Louis Leipoldt.

You’re playing sport, and you feel your knee go… so you slap on an ice pack and get back out there. (After all, your team needs you, right?) Or you’re running, and you feel a twinge… but you push through the pain barrier. (Hey, isn’t that what mental toughness is all about?)

In both cases, you’d be making a decision that you could very soon come to regret. ‘I see this sort of thing all the time,’ says Dr Dirk Nell, a full-time orthopaedic surgeon at Mediclinic Louis Leipoldt in Bellville. He warns that, by playing on when you’re already injured, you risk making the injury worse – or picking up a related injury.

Here’s an example. ‘In the knee world, many people have knee injuries with knee instability,’ Dr Nell says. ‘So for example, a rugby player might have a torn ligament, where they’ll feel slight instability, but they’ll say to themselves, “It’s OK”, and go back onto the field. That’s when the unstable knee gets reinjured, and then they’ll also have an additional cartilage tear.’

This is especially common among athletes who have unstable knees, he says. ‘They’ll go back onto the rugby field and then injure something else because of that initial injury.’

The other common scenario Dr Nell encounters is with over-use injuries. ‘In the case, the patient – typically a runner – will start feeling some pain, and often what is required to heal that is just some rest.’ But you know how runners can be. ‘What might happen here is that they’ll push through the pain,’ says Dr Nell, ’and then that turns an over-use injury into something that will not heal spontaneously.’

In this case, says Dr Nell, the runner will eventually get to a point where they just can’t run any more. ‘At that point, they will either have to have surgery or an injection,’ says Dr Nell. ‘Or they might have to rest for extended periods of time – in many cases, that’s months of recovery.’

Bottom line? If it hurts, stop. If you carry on, you’ll only run the risk of hurting yourself even further.

The information provided in this article was correct at the time of publishing. At Mediclinic we endeavour to provide our patients and readers with accurate and reliable information, which is why we continually review and update our content. However, due to the dynamic nature of clinical information and medicine, some information may from time to time become outdated prior to revision.