RICE

it gets hot, it gets red, it's tender, it's painful to walk on.

We used to say RICE.

RICE stood for-

Yeah

... uh, rest, ice, compression, and elevation.

Yeah.

We no longer say that.

The guy, I don't remember his name, the guy who invented the acronym RICE now says he was wrong.

And then some people, they will try their own, uh, therapy such as painkillers.

They can do a RICE therapy.

RICE is an acronym for rest, ice, which is a cold compression of the joint-

Mm

...

Structure isn't the opposite of freedom.

If you do it right, structure is what creates the freedom, and this is the E in the RICE framework, evaluate and execute.

You look at where the friction and the slip-ups actually happen in your day and execute by deciding ahead of time so the right action happens whether you feel like it or not.

So tonight, pre-decide tomorrow's one habit.

Um, we, our trainer at Tulane was the guy, he was part of the Olympic, uh, training group also.

He was the guy that came up with RICE.

Rest, ice...

What, what is it? Let's see.

Rest, ice, compress, and elevate.

That's what RICE stands for.

And it works.

So if we had...

Can you reach out to me? And I thought I'd share what was on her mind, but I brought that up to you, and you said that you had a patient question or a listener question that was worth discussing as well so yeah yeah why don't we start with yours and then i'll uh we'll hopefully it's not the same thing it'd be funny yeah no sounds good

yeah kind of nice same kind of idea reached out not via our normal way of reaching out through the dms or whatever but um it doesn't matter that's the point right give it give us your questions and we'll respond So just to kind of paraphrase, we've talked a little about this in the past, but their question is basically, they've heard over the years, basically the standard when somebody gets hurt or something, standard advice of the acute injury, the RICE principle, right? And so that's something that's been taught to us and that's common knowledge in the sports and sports.

Sports World and basically anybody that's kind of been around sports and injuries, they've heard the Rice Principle.

And we'll get into what that means in a second.

When people twist their ankle and they have what we might call a sprained ankle, they have either a very slight tear of the ligaments.

Often, in the past, we told them the acronym RICE, which stood for rest, ice, compression, and elevation.

Well, now we know that was half wrong.

We no longer really have people rest because when you rest, you actually lose muscle strength.

That acute inflammatory response is really important.

So it turns out that icing can interfere.

Another thing that's not in that RICE acronym, but we used to have people do as well, is take an anti-inflammatory.

Now we say better not to take an anti-inflammatory because inflammation acutely is part of what helps that body's recovery reflex go into action.

you can't always do compression but sometimes you can just wrap the area and just try and squeeze some of that fluid out try and keep it out and so those are the first steps that you're always going to do on is it an area that can be supported is it a space where you can put weight on there can you not can you get to a place where you can be more comfortable and try and get there and i think those are the first steps to any injury

Thank you for highlighting rice.

Rice is an oldie but a goodie.

It's still relevant in the hand.

So with that being said, you know, we've spent a couple minutes talking about what can you do over a few days to get the swelling down? What if it's not getting better over the course of days or sometimes weeks? You talked about fingers can remain swollen, but when should you not attempt home treatment? You know, we might be from an era where, yeah, just put some mice on it or, you know, put a little ointment and everything will be fine.