“Use It or Lose It:” What This Popular Neurorehab Phrase Means by Flint Rehab

A couple points I'd like to make on this:

1. I disagree on 'Use it or lose it' existing for stroke survivors. You can read all about my reasons for that in these 11 posts.

• use it or lose it (11 posts to February 2013)

2. Exercising the dominant side increases recovery of the affected side. Post here:

Compensatory rehabilitation limits motor recovery after stroke

But I'm not medically trained so my points should not be listened to.  

The latest here:

“Use It or Lose It:” What This Popular Neurorehab Phrase Means by Flint Rehab

Medically reviewed by Andrew Tran PT, DPT, NCS, CSCS — written by Flint Rehab.

Last updated on December 7, 2021

If you’re working on recovery after a neurological injury, you’ve likely heard the phrase “use it or lose it.” This is one of the main principles of neuroplasticity, which is the central nervous system’s ability to make adaptive changes based on the behaviors you repetitively perform.

To help you understand this popular neurorehabilitation phrase, this article will discuss:

• What “use it or lose it” means
• Other principles of neuroplasticity
• Is it possible to regain lost functions?

What “Use It or Lose It” Means           

To minimize losses after neurological injury, individuals must focus on promoting neuroplasticity to reorganize the central nervous system’s neural circuitry and restore compromised functions. One of the most effective ways to do this is to think “use it or lose it.” It simply means that in order to retain proficiency over a function, you must practice it regularly.

Every function you perform activates a unique set of neural pathways in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). The most frequently activated neural pathways are strengthened and maintained, while those less frequently activated become neglected and forgotten.

This occurs because the central nervous system no longer senses a demand for those functions. Therefore, to be as efficient as possible and save energy for more in-demand functions, it will start to forget how to perform unused functions.

Consequently, prolonged disuse can lead to learned non-use, which refers to the conditioned suppression of affected body parts. For example, when the left arm is weakened by a stroke, individuals tend to compensate by using their unaffected right arm. Consistently using the unaffected arm leads to disuse of the affected arm until eventually, individuals forget how to use their affected arm.

The only way to prevent functions from worsening and becoming useless after a neurological injury is to use them. Repetitively practicing functions affected by neurological injury reinforces demand for them and encourages the central nervous system to reorganize those functions to unaffected regions of the brain/spinal cord. The more you practice affected functions, the stronger the newly rewired functions become.

Now that you understand what “use it or lose it” means, let’s discuss some other principles of neuroplasticity.