It’s a medical fact that ligament injuries are much more serious than muscle injuries. The muscles in your body tend to have ample blood supply, resulting in faster healing times and less proactive treatment. As a very simple example, think weight lifting in the gym. Even though it’s not exactly an injury, you’re essentially breaking down your muscles in hopes that your body repairs them to become larger and stronger.
What really surprised us, before we put together our own ankle rehab program, was the fact that so many individuals are still having moderate ankle pain months, sometimes years after their injury. Even though ankle sprains are one of the most common daily injuries, there seems to be no common knowledge on how you should treat and rehabilitate your ankle.
Without following an ankle rehab program, ankle ligaments only heal to around 50-70 percent strength when they are injured. (Andriacchi, T. Injury and Repair of the Musculoskeletal Soft Tissues. Park Ridge, IL: AAOS; 1987; 103-108.) Armed with this knowledge, it’s easy to see that you dramatically restrict results by following the general idea that it’s correct to only rest, ice, compress and elevate your ankle. Ankle instability can even lead to degenerative ankle arthritis later in life, if not properly treated from the onset.
Why Ankle Rehab is Essential
As we’ve outlined in the previous paragraphs, your ankle ligaments can be pretty stubborn when it comes to healing. And since ligaments are the most commonly injured portion of the ankle, it’s quite important that you begin rehabbing the very same day as your injury.
Ligaments are generally not as skilled at regenerating themselves effectively. When any sort of injury is sustained, your ankle ligaments start to heal by using a process known as scar tissue to bind together damaged fibers with collagen. While this may sound natural, it’s honestly a very ineffective healing process.
This scar tissue is the main reason why so many individuals tend to re-injure their ankle. The collagen your body uses to repair the damage is weak and quite inelastic. This collection of scar tissue is an ineffective replacement for a healthy, strong ligament, which is why you need to treat your ankle before it sets in.
Preventing Scar Tissue Formation
Now, with all this talk about damaged ligaments, ankle sprains, and scar tissue, you may be feeling a little uneasy at this point. Don’t worry, you can flush that feeling from your system because we have the answers and knowledge to steer you on the right path to full recovery. Thankfully, scar tissue formation is very easy to prevent. As long as you stay active, and proactive, with your recovery and rehabilitation, you can avoid chronic injury and restrengthen your ankle much faster.
There are also a bunch of other techniques and strategies for helping to prevent and breakup scar tissue, but we’ll save the bulk of the instruction for when you get started with our rehab program.
