Injury Spotlight: Lateral Ankle Sprain
Have you ever felt that sudden, sharp pain on the outside of your ankle after you misstep or perhaps felt your ankle ‘roll’ as you fell over? You may have a lateral ankle sprain. This type of acute injury is incredibly common, especially among dancers, circus artists, and athletes. But with that said, it really can affect anyone. In this post we’ll explore what a lateral ankle sprain is, how it occurs, home care tips and how myotherapy can help.
What is a Lateral Ankle Sprain?
A lateral ankle sprain occurs when the ligaments on the outer side of your ankle are over-stretched or torn. These ligaments are crucial for stabilising your ankle joint, when they’re injured it can lead to pain, swelling, difficulty weight bearing and reduced ankle movement.
How do Lateral Ankle Sprains Commonly Occur?
Lateral ankle sprains occur when you foot rolls inward placing stress on the outer side of the ankle. This typically occurs as a sudden movement. Ligaments are designed to cope with a certain amount of stress and stretch at a joint, but when a sudden force or excessive force occurs it can overload the ligament and cause a sprain.
This can happen in various scenarios:
Misstepping on an uneven surface - I’m looking at you Melbourne cobblestone laneways!
Landing awkwardly from a jump
Sudden changes in direction while playing sport or dancing
Causes and Risk Factors
Although an ankle sprain is an acute injury and can happen to anyone, there are some factors that can increase your risk:
Previous ankle injuries: If you’ve sprained your ankle before, you can be more likely to do it again (that’s where proper rehab after injury makes a big difference!)
Muscle imbalance and weakness: You want a balance of strength across all the muscles that support the ankle joint to help prevent injury (that means more than just having strong calves)
Environment: Slippery, uneven or unstable surfaces can increase the risk of a misstep or fall (that’s why we train proprioception exercises to help your body cope better with uneven and unpredictable environments)
How to Manage a Lateral Ankle Sprain at Home
Immediate care is important for a lateral ankle sprain. While in the past you might have used the R.I.C.E method (rest, ice, compression, elevation), the research now tells us a slightly different approach. ‘PEACE and LOVE’ is what we use now.
Protect: unload the affected ankle and restrict your movement, particularly weight bearing movement. You don’t want to stop movement completely because this will compromise tissue strength and recovery, so keep it moving with gentle pain free movement while sitting down.
Elevate: elevate the injured foot, ideally above the heart. This helps to promote fluid flow out of the injured area.
Avoid anti inflammatory medications: The early stages of inflammation that occur in an acute injury are an important part of the healing process. We want to allow some inflammation to help with tissue healing and avoid anti-inflammatories early on. We can control the amount of inflammation using elevation and compression.
Compress: Applying a compressive force such as a bandage, tape or compression garments can help manage inflammation and swelling, it may also help with pain management.
Educate: This is key! It’s important to understand that your body is rapidly deploying its tissue healing processes, it is your job to support this. Understanding and supporting your body’s processes will help improve your injury recovery. Remember you can’t rush healing and sometimes the biggest hurdle we face with an injury is having the patience to give your body the time it needs to repair.
After a few days of PEACE, we can the apply some LOVE to the injured ankle.
Load: Soft tissue injuries benefit from movement and exercise (but in a gradual and controlled manner). Early optimal loading, without increasing pain, helps to promote repair and builds strong tissues.
Optimism: Your brain plays a significant role in your recovery. The story your brain tells you about your injury, your recovery, your pain etc. can shape how well and how quickly you recover. Staying realistic but optimistic will positively impact your recovery.
Vascularisation: Soft tissue injuries benefit from increased blood flow, the best way to achieve this is through cardiovascular activity. For an ankle injury this might be swimming, cycling or walking (if pain free).
Exercise: The evidence tells us that exercise is our gold standard treatment for soft tissue injuries. Exercise should begin as soon as it can be done pain free, it should start gradually and then increase in challenge. Exercises help to restore strength, mobility and proprioception. It also helps to avoid re-injury.
Do you need to get an x-ray?
This is a very common question and very often when we experience this type of injury our first thought can be that we need to rush to the doctor and get an x-ray. Many ankle sprains result in significant bruising, swelling and an inability to weight bear initially following the injury. This is not a definitive sign of a fracture. In many cases you may not need an x-ray. Your Myotherapist can easily and quickly check to see if an x-ray is required and help you avoid unnecessary x-rays and long waits at the emergency department.
How Myotherapy Can Help
At our clinic lateral ankle sprains are a common presentation and myotherapy can offer effective treatment in all stages of this type of injury.
Assessment: Myotherapists can provide immediate care in assessment of the injury including referral for imaging if necessary.
Acute Care: Myotherapists can provide acute care and treatment following the injury, in particular lymphatic drainage techniques to manage swelling and reduce pain and manual therapy treatment to other areas that may have been affected in your injury.
Support: Myotherapists can effectively provide support to the injured area with taping and bracing. They can also help with fitting a moon boot to ensure support during the healing process.
Manual Therapy: As you move out of the acute phase of your injury (first 24-48 hours) your Myotherapist can provide manual therapy treatment to the area to help with pain management and recovery.
Exercise rehab: As your injury heals your Myotherapist can help with exercises to improve your strength, mobility, coordination and balance.
Lateral ankle sprain are common but treatable injuries. They can be frustrating when they occur but by understanding how to care for your injury, what treatment is available you can take proactive steps (non-weight bearing of course!) to recover quickly and prevent future sprains. Myotherapy offers comprehensive care for these types of injuries from acute to long-term management, ensuring your back tap dancing again stronger than before.
If you’re dealing with a lateral ankle sprain reach out to make an appointment for expert care and support.