An injury to your ankle can be a very disruptive and painful problem to have. Often, these injuries will occur during sports, but they are not limited to these events as it is possible to suffer this injury any time that you take a wrong step or land on your foot unevenly. To minimize the symptoms and time needed to heal, you will want to be informed about sprains.
How Can You Tell If Your Ankle Is Just Sprained Or Broken?
While people often assume that a sprained ankle is not a serious injury, it can be extremely painful. In fact, it can be exceedingly difficult for a person to determine whether their ankle is sprained or broken. Some clues that may help you with this assessment will be the location of the pain and its duration. When the injury is strictly a sprain, you should not have much pain from the bones in your ankle. Rather, the pain will be limited to the tissue that surrounds the bone. To test this, you should attempt to lightly touch the ball of your ankle. If you experience a sudden and intense increase in pain, you may have a break. The length of the pain may also be a clue as sprains will typically start to subside in pain more quickly than broken bones.
What Type Of Treatment Will A Sprained Ankle Require?
The treatment for a sprained ankle can vary depending on the severity of the damage that occurred. When a person experiences this injury, the tissue surrounding their ankle joint will be damaged. To help this tissue heal, a person will need to minimize the amount of walking that they do until the swelling and pain subside. For many patients, this may take up to a week or longer. Unfortunately, laying down or sitting can cause intense swelling in the ankle, which can be both painful and damaging to the tissue. This swelling occurs due to fluids accumulating in the damaged tissue, but you can minimize this problem by simply elevating the ankle and applying a cold compress to it.
As your ankle heals, you may want to consider enrolling in physical therapy. This may seem unnecessary for a minor injury. However, the ankle is highly complex, and if the tissue does not properly heal, the joint may be at a far greater risk of suffering this injury in the future. Luckily, the therapy for this type of injury would be fairly short so that you can enjoy a fully healed ankle without causing more inconveniences or disruptions than necessary. Visit a local urgent care if necessary for diagnosis and treatment.
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