The Healing Process

The inflammatory response, which is responsible for causing swelling right after an injury happens, is the first of three phases (or stages) of the body’s healing process. The amount of swelling and duration of the inflammatory response depends on the severity of the injury and the type of body tissues that are damaged.

The three stages of healing are often discussed separately, but the healing process is more of a continuum than a step-by-step procedure, and the various stages overlap each other without any true beginning or ending points. Because of this, time after injury is usually used to identify the stage of healing that a given injury is in (assuming that the normal healing process is taking place). It’s important to understand that the healing process needs to be uninterrupted in order for the body to heal properly and completely.

The Healing Process

Stage 1: Inflammatory Response

This stage starts immediately after an injury happens and usually lasts for around 2 days, but it can last up to 4 days. When cells become injured, they release certain chemicals and materials that trigger the inflammatory response, thus starting the body’s healing process.  The five cardinal signs of inflammation are: redness, swelling, heat in the affected area, pain, and dysfunction. This phase of the healing process is designed to clean up the injured tissues, setting the stage for proper cell and tissue repair. If the inflammatory response doesn’t work properly or doesn’t end when the body no longer needs it, normal healing will not happen.

Stage 2: Fibroblastic Repair

After the inflammation subsides, the body is able to bring in its repairmen to start working toward forming a scar and fixing the injury. The initial steps of scar formation actually begin a few hours after the injury occurs. This repair phase can last up to six weeks, depending on the tissue that’s injured. The signs and symptoms seen in the inflammatory response phase go away as the body shifts into a more repair-focused part of the healing process. However, there’s usually still some tenderness with pressure and pain with movement or stress on the forming scar. Pain declines and eventually goes away while the strength of the newly laid-down scar tissue increases. If the repair phase goes according to plan, there is actually very little scar tissue that is formed (only as much as is needed), which helps reduce any negative effects this tissue may have later on and eliminates the problems that excessive scar tissue can cause.

Stage 3: Maturation-Remodeling

This is the longest stage of the three and (on the cellular level) can last for up to a year or longer after the injury occurs. The distinguishing features of this phase include realignment of the scar tissue fibers that were laid down in the previous phase (the “remodeling” part of the phase’s name). These fibers were laid down in no particular order or orientation, but they’ll function better and be stronger if they’re aligned along the same lines of stress that the surrounding uninjured tissue is aligned along. As time progresses, this stage of healing sees a continuous increase in strength of the scar tissue, and the tissue begins to look and work like normal, healthy tissue (the “maturation” part of the phase’s name).

Despite what some people or products may claim, it is physiologically impossible to speed up the healing process. The best that any medical professional or treatment can do is facilitate the healing process by staying out of its way. There are many things that can delay proper healing, so treatments are directed to keep these delays from happening.