How do I know if an injury is serious or not?

It's very rare to have a doctor or other health professionals to ask when you are out exercising, running, working out in a group and so on. How are we to know whether one has become injured enough to step off and put compression on the injury? 

The moment you feel that something happened, trust your instinct! Often one feels that something in the body is not as it should; you know that something’s happened in your body; and you should trust that feeling. Because it is usually an injury you need to take care of ... Sometimes you can even feel that something snapped, or hear it inside your body. This is not a good sign and you should definitely take care of that body part as instructed earlier in Acute Injuries.

Often we are so pumped up with endorphins when we’re working out, that we don’t feel the pain, and therefore you can’t trust that symptom. Many have unfortunately the tendency to pause a moment and try the injured area out and find that it's not so bad, it barely hurts, and decide to keep training ... But this is the worst thing you can do for the healing process of the injury; as the bleeding increases, and unfortunately the healing and recovery time will increase because of this. 

In other words ... Trust your instincts! 

I would appreciate any comments on the texts I've posted so far, good or bad, and suggestions for improvement, etc. And why not questions or ideas for new topics. What would you like to read about?

Good Luck!
Shirin Zarur