Abdominal "Pull" Not Healing

For about three years I had been rigorously training my abdominal muscles and built a very strong core. I was at the gym one day doing a twist exercise and suddenly felt pain in my lower right ab region. I immediately stopped. The next morning I decided to test it out by doing a few crunches; there was no pain but as I flexed my lower abs, I felt and heard a "click" in the area I had hurt. The next day the whole right side of my body from the top of my rib cage down to my pelvis was so sore I could barely move. I iced it for a few days and then went to the ER; they did an ultrasound, ruled out a hernia and chalked it up to a mild muscle strain/pull. I read many online articles and they all estimated the healing time for this type of injury as 4-6 weeks. Well, it's now been 16 weeks and I still have not completely healed. I cut out exercise completely until about week 14 when I started to slowly resume my ab exercises- very light routines about once a week followed by heat therapy. I still experience moderate pain in the hours and days after I exercise, a throbbing pain in the localized area and a general soreness (not exercise soresness- more of a bruised feeling) throughout the entire right side of my stomach and into my lower back as well.

Should I be worried about the fact that this is taking so long to heal? Is it good to slowly resume exercise? Will I ever get back to "normal"?

[Dr Vinod]

Hello,

There is nothing to worry and I would suggest you to go for more of cardio form of exercises viz. swimming, running, jogging, skipping and decrease the load on abdomen.

You try to do abdominal stretches and slowly with time you will be fine and follow up with a physiotherapist to learn few types of stretching and types of movements which do not directly put strain on your lower abdominal musculature.

Take care!