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Question: I first sprained my ankle as a teenager and have sprained it many times since. I seem to sprain it so easily now, and have to be very careful how I step to avoid injuring my ankle. My doctor recommended physical therapy to help my ankle. How wll therapy help?
Answer: When you sprain your ankle, the ligaments and soft tissue are stretched beyond their normal limits. This leads to pain, swelling, and difficulty walking for several days. but there is also injury to the joint proprioceptors. These proprioceptors send messages to your brain to give you feedback about where your body is in space. We know about other senses such as taste, hearing, and smell, but we also have a position sense called proprioception which is knowing where our body is in space and in relation to itself and other objects.
Proprioception is the body's ability to react appropriately to our position sense. How does this apply to your ankle? Your foot and ankle need to adjust to uneven surfaces such as walking gravel or a grassy, bumpy yard. When a joint is injured however, the sense of positon is affected and therefore the brain does not receive the appropriate messages from the joing to avoid injury. This can lead to problems with balance and coordination ultimately resultng in recurrent ankle sprains. Physical therapy techniques can retrain the joint proprioceptors by utilizing specific exercises and activities that challenge balance and reaction time of the injured joint. Rehabilitation through physical therapy will help strengthen your ankle, improve proprioception, and reduce the risk of a reoccurance.
Follow this link for full text on additional ankle sprain information.
http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00150
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