Brian Westbrook suffers injuries all the time, but he always manages to bounce back. In this case, Westbrook is out with broken ribs, which means he’s probably not going to bounce back that quickly.
The ribs surround your chest cavity, so it’s a critical part of your body. It protects the lungs, but also acts as an anchor for your upper body through the respiratory system.
Westbrook broke two of his ribs in the previous game against the Redskins, but he kept playing. Amazing.
How you break ribs? Trauma. Ribs just usually don’t break on their own, it requires great trauma. While it’s not identified in the press when the break happened, you can be assured it happened either on a direct hit or landing on the ground hard. The ribs are fascinating in that when they break they can cause major pain even if it’s a tiny fracture. You can also break your ribs by coughing. Yes, coughing.
What are the symptoms of broken ribs? Pain. A broken rib is going to inflame either tendons or the lungs themselves, so your body will feel pain. With broken ribs the pain happens when you’re just breathing. A more serious condition exists if parts of your chest move when breathing, but others don’t. This could be indicitive of something called flail chest. This is when multiple ribs are broken away and move on their own. This makes breathing harder and leads to lung damage. I cannot stress how serious a condition this is, so you always need to be checked out if you think you’ve broken a rib.
What is the treatment for broken ribs? Nada. There isn’t anything except time to help with broken ribs. You need to stop exercising or playing football and rest. Coughing should be avoided and pain medication can be taken.
How long does it take to recover from broken ribs? Depending on the severity and age it could take as quickly as a week or as long as six week. The younger you are and the fewer ribs broken, the quicker you will heal. The important thing is to remember is you must suspend physical activity that affects the ribs.