alt Hacker NewsI fractured my elbow mountain biking, the tip of my radius. The urgent care doctor gave me a sling and suggested months of immobility. The orthopaedic said to throw away the sling and start exercising the elbow as soon as I could, and prescribed PT. Turns out that was the right move, there are some permanent changes to mobility but it's about 97% what it was before the crash. Immobilizing joints can apparently cause the muscles, tendons, and nerves to seize up and lose significant range of movement permanently.
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Something really similar happened to me, I broke my radial head cycling last year.
2 days later I got a call from the doctor telling me to start moving it as much as I could, I asked when I should stop with the sling and he told me yesterday.
Feels kinda reasonable. Human bodies cannot possibly have eveolved to require 6 months of rest to fix. All those humans would have died out thousands of years ago.