How do I fix my rolled ankle?
- Jamye Newlove
- May 29, 2020
- 3 min read
Suffering body pains? Getting injured more than you would like? Training or exercising in pain? Substandard performance in your sport or activity? Read on...
If so, have you thought to consider it may be related to your ankle? Ankle?? Really??
Have you ever sprained an ankle?
A good body of research is now emerging that is showing us the little old ankle roll isn't such an innocuous injury as as we may have thought.
Ankle sprains are the most common musculoskeletal injury in sporting and active populations. They also plague the general population through slips and trips and other minor mishaps. If you are like me who has sprained their ankle about 10 times during your basketball days then the answer is yes!
In 2004 a group of clinicians and researches established the International Ankle Consortium. By 2016 they compiled a tremendous amount of research on this topic from which they produced a position statement on the prevalence, impact and long term consequences of lateral ankle sprains (follow links below).
This blog is about sharing a few of their ideas and hopefully lift the veil on this underrated injury. Most of us when we roll an ankle just let nature take its course, shrug it off and say "she'll be right". In actual fact this is far from the truth.
So why is it so bad to leave an ankle sprain to "heal" on its own?
The short answer is it doesn't actually fully heal. This lack of full repair has detrimental effects on our bodies ability to function efficiently and in turn can impact the quality of our health
When you roll an ankle you sustain physical damage to the surrounding joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons. The first response after the ankle roll are the iconic signs of inflammation (heat, pain, redness, swelling and loss of function).
The process of inflammation is the body's natural response for repairing damaged tissue. Part of this process involves the formation of scar tissue to 'patch' things up. Once the heat, pain, redness and swelling disappear after a week or two of hobbling around the scar tissue formation perpetuates loss of function both locally and globally via its effects on the nervous system.
The scar tissue alters ideal sensory input from the damaged areas to your central command centre (aka your brain). This alteration in sensory input is what leads to a whole host of other musculoskeletal issues.
The impaired sensory input results in compensatory changes to our body's postural and balance control. This in turn alters how we walk, run and generally move. It is like we end up driving a car with unbalanced wheels. Similar to getting uneven wear on our car's tyres and suspension we end up putting abnormal pressure on our body.
The ongoing consequences of this ankle roll induced imbalance are:
Chronic ankle instability leading to:
recurrent ankle injury and giving way
ankle arthritis
Other musculoskeletal injuries because of disrupted posture and balance such as an ACL injury.
Wear and tear in knees, hips and back ( ie. spinal disc degeneration ).
Poor health because the dysfunction and pain results in being less active.
Poor performance because of altered muscle control and agility.
Pain with normal movement both in life, work and sports.
In developing bodies these changes are detrimental to motor skill acquisition and coordination which are so important to proper body development, sport performance and overall activity enjoyment.
One of our missions at Move As 1 is to raise awareness about this condition and provide a set of solutions so we can avoid and overcome the burden that comes from a seemingly simple injury.
This all begs the question. What can we do to stop ankle sprains?
Is there a way to predict who is likely to succumb to an ankle roll? and if so, how can we prevent it and if it does happen what is the best way to rehab it back to full function.
Stay tuned. This introduction is the start of a series of blogs that will answer these questions.
In the meantime, if you think you may be suffering the deleterious effects of an old ankle sprain please reach out here and let's see how we can help.
Be well and move as 1
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