Ankle Sprains
Do you know how to treat ankle sprains? Would you know when to visit a doctor and when to try and work the kinks out yourself? The odds are good that you might be a bit in the dark about how to tell the kinds of ankle sprains that require immediate medical attention from the ones that you can – figuratively speaking – walk off. There is little doubt that ankle sprains are painful, annoying, and in some cases may actually hamper the activities you are so used to engaging in. The foregoing notwithstanding, there are several ways to go about treating your ankle sprains at home, providing that medical attention is not required.
First and foremost, take your weight off the affected ankle. Sprains require absolute rest of the limb and in so doing you will prevent any further injury or ligament tearing. Rest may simply mean walking with the help of crutches, or relying on the shoulder of someone else to help you hobble about as you seek a place to sit down and continue work on your ankle sprains. The next course of action demands the use of ice packs. The goal of icing your ankle must be an immediate one, as this will curtail any swelling and also bruising. Caught early enough, the odds are good that your ankle sprains will not develop the cornucopia of colors usually associated with a nasty sprain.
Next on the list for ankle sprains is the compression of the area. This, too, prevents further swelling from taking place. It also provides some support to encourage the partially torn ligament to heal in place. Bandaging is a bit of a learned art, and it may take a little while before you know what constituted ankle sprains that are properly bandaged to support the weight that is placed on the limb, from ankle sprains that are too tightly or too loosely wound for comfort or support. Once this is accomplished, the last thing to keep in mind is the elevation of the limb.
Elevating limbs affected by ankle sprains is supremely easy to do, and if you have a pillow you can place on another chair and then place your leg upon, you will be in good shape. The goal of the ankle sprains elevation is the idea of keeping swelling from building up, as is usually the case when fluid builds up in a joint. This fluid is natural to the body but keeping it out of the joint helps the healing process.