Can Massage Therapy Help Your Sprained Ankle?

Can Massage Therapy Help Your Sprained Ankle?

 

Ankle sprains are incredibly common. I know. I sprained both of mine when I was in my teens. Each foot has 26 bones and 112 ligaments that hold the bones together. When you sprain your ankle, you generally have injured one of seven major ligaments.

We use the word sprain when a ligament or joint is injured and the word strain when a muscle or its tendon is injured.

 

Outer Ankle Sprain

Three ligaments are on the outer part of your foot, and four are on the inner part. These three ligaments you see here are the commonly sprained ones on the outer part of your foot, particularly the one in Blue toward the front of the ankle.

 

 

 

When those ligaments get injured, the brain sends a message to the ankle joint to produce lots of fluid to make you slow down and not injure yourself further.

 

 

 

When the ankle swells, it’s usually painful to walk. If the sprain is mild, your ankle may not visibly swell but may or may not hurt to walk on. This motion typically sprains the ligaments on the outside of the foot.

Inner Ankle Sprain

 

In addition to the ligaments on the outer of the ankle, these are the four ligaments that are regularly injured on the inner side of the ankle. The injuries on this side of the ankle often happen as people get older.

 

But if you are a very active person, young or old, you can easily sprain any of these ligaments. If you just leave the ankle alone, it will usually get better by itself, but you will likely be vulnerable to spraining it again and again.

 

To fully heal, treatment is usually necessary to get rid of all the scar tissue. A certain type of scar tissue, called adhesive scar tissue, is the primary reason that injuries don’t fully heal. If you don’t get rid of all that scar tissue, the ankle periodically sprains over and over again for many years.

 

Testing for an ankle sprain

 

A series of hands-on tests help identify which of these seven ligaments are injured. Once you precisely locate the injury, the treatment is not difficult. But if you are even off by a ¼ of an inch, the treatment doesn’t work. So, the therapist has to really know their anatomy and be skilled at assessment testing.

 

Specialized Massage for Ankle Sprains

There is an effective type of massage called friction therapy. Treatment is only a little uncomfortable, but it ensures that the ligaments heal fully.

Ankle Exercises After the Sprain is Healed

 When you have a sprained ankle, the muscles of the foot and lower leg weaken quickly. So, as the treatment progresses, my clients do a series of exercises to strengthen the ligaments and muscles involved in controlling ankle movement. The exercises also keep the scar tissue from reforming.

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Ben E. Benjamin holds a Ph.D. in Sports Medicine and was the founder and President of the Muscular Therapy Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He is the author of dozens of articles on working with injuries and chronic pain as well as the widely used books in the field, Are You Tense?, Exercise Without Injury and Listen To Your Pain: The Active Person’s Guide to Understanding, Identifying and Treating Pain and Injury. Dr. Benjamin has been in private practice for over 50 years and teaches therapists throughout the country.