Is there such a thing as over compensation injury?
When one limb is injured, some individuals will report similar symptoms in the opposite limb. Your Specialist, GP, therapist or family may describe this as an "overuse" or "due to compensating" from the other limb being injured.
Is this really the case though? Lets have a look at what the research says about this theory.
According to the AMA Guides® to the Evaluation of Disease and Injury Causation, 2nd Edition...
💪 for upper limb injuries💪 (shoulders, arms, hands)
"Whilst the hypothesis apparently seems plausible (perhaps intuitively obvious) to some, Health care professionals cannot credibly rely on superficial considerations of plausibility or intuition. A solid basis in science is required instead. through review of medical literature reveals that there are no credible studies that support a causative relationship. the concept that favouring 1 upper limb can result in injury or illness in the other is not based on scientific evidence; instead it is an unsupportable myth. "
🦶Lower Limb Injuries 🦶 (hips, legs, ankles, feet)
"Review of the medical literature reveals no generally accepted studies that support a causal relationship. the most notable editorial conducted "can favouring one leg damage the other? by Ian Harrington, MD, and W. Robert Harris, MD, refutes the reported cause and effect relationship stating
"Many people and doctors believe that pain or disability in one leg can stress the other one and produce symptoms in it. we believe that there is no scientific basis for such reasoning. it may seem logical but there is no evidence to support this.
🤔What can we take away from this? 🤔
We tend to explain things that make sense to us and accepted by the client. However we need to be conscious of what evidence there is available to support what we say. What we have here is a theory that makes logical sense and is easy for clients to understand but no current research conducted to date has been able to validate the hypothesis.
Now I'm not saying everyone's situation is the same and we would need to treat each case individually and provide justification as to why we believe this to be the case. Just saying it's because one limb is injured does not provide credible evidence-based justification to explain similar or the same symptoms in the opposite limb. This may change in the future as more research is conducted in this area.
Resources
Melhorn, J. M., Talmage, J. B., Ackerman, W. E., & Hyman, M. H. (Eds.). (2014). AMA guides to the evaluation of disease and injury causation. Chicago, IL: American Medical Association.
