Recovering from injuries or illness seems more like a medical condition than actual fitness & nutrition. Should these be filtered out? Just seems like post like these require medical attention such as physical therapist, sports medicine doctor's advice.
2 Answers
Like anything else you read on the internet, there's a degree of responsibility and caution that falls on both the askers and answerers. Don't ask us when it is okay for you to resume weightlifting if you've just be diagnosed with heart problems. It sounds trite to constantly hear "Talk to your doctor", but sometimes, it is the only advice. At the same time, folks answering questions shouldn't throw around wild generalities when the author has not provided sufficient information.
Here's how I see the breakdown of these issues:
On Topic
- Dealing with exercise-related injuries are on topic.
"I pulled a muscle running. Apply heat or cold?" - Working around health-related issues in the context of reaching physical fitness, on topic.
"I have allergies. What is a good exercise to replace my morning jog when I can't go outside?"
Off Topic
- General medical/health "recovering from illness" questions (unless there is a significant "physical fitness" component), off topic.
"What are the best remedies to speed up recovery from a cold?" — off topic
And when talking about any sort of medical claims or treatments, please remember the "Back it Up! Principle".
Off course there's a lot of gray area here, I don't mind giving some general advice on what kind of exercise to do after your injury. But I'm worried about answering questions without knowing the full extent of ones problems.
Giving advice about starting to exercise when overweight looks fine, until we find out that person is morbidly obese. That's the problem with 'general' advice, it only applies to those who fall into the general population, but is potentially dangerous for those who don't.
Just as with legal advice: go see a 'real' expert and ask him for tailored advice.
I don't want to be responsible for some injury, because someone blindly followed my advice
