Ah, you overactive Northern California Bay Area women. I get it. I understand the whole working out every day or I will go crazy thing, particularly when we live in such a beautiful place.
Short answer?
It depends. (Argh! I know. I hate answers like this.) But it depends on so many factors: what did you have done? how bruised and swollen are you? What kind of exercise?
Why do we say no exercise after surgery? I am not trying to be mean. I am doing it to protect you. Activity stirs things up, so no exercise will help lessen swelling, keep bruising down, and avoid bigger complications like seromas or bleeds. Even if you exercise a different area (example: you want to work out your legs after you had your breasts done), all your body parts are connected. There is no way to just exercise your legs without increasing your pulse, blood pressure, and body temperature to all parts of your body. So your leg exercises could cause complications with your breast surgery.
For some things a little light activity may be okay (read as gentle stroll down a flat street). The problem is there can be no general advice- one patient may be okay with a gentle stroll at one week, but another patient’s body isn’t ready until 2 or 3 weeks.
And then there is the problem of what you say and what the person does. When I say “gentle stroll on a flat street” some people morph that into “brisk power walk on the dish at Stanford for two hours with their dog pulling at them.”
General rules of thumb?
- No exercise AT ALL for the first two weeks on almost all surgery, and for most surgeries up to a month.
- If you have ANY bruising (red, purple, yellow, or green bruise) no exercise
- If you have any swelling
- If areas are sore and hurt. (Those are general signs still of inflammation and swelling)
- I usually don’t let people go back to full exercise for about a month, or a little longer if they had certain surgeries like a tummy tuck, if they swelled or bruised more than usual, or if they were slow to heal.
What is considered exercise?
- Anything which makes you hot and sweaty. (yes, this includes s-e-x )
- Anything which makes your heart race
- Anything which raises your blood pressure.
I know this blog is tough. It is hard not to exercise. But I find patients all heal at their own pace. And the ones who listen to me and are truly healed before they go back to activity hit their full speed faster. So take advantage of this downtime (when do you ever get downtime here in silicon valley?) Read a book, watch a movie, make a photo album.
Just no exercise til I say it is okay.