Ankle pain can involve several kinds of injury…so, for your research, here are the links for you to choose from in this section:
Damage to the ligaments is usually the prime concern, and like the shoulder, the ankle receives a lesser blood supply than other joints in the body…
If you refer to some pictures of ankle anatomy it shows this and this is why an ankle takes longer to heal…
There are other concerns with an ankle that has been injured as well as you cannot walk or exercise at certain stages of injury, and if the ankle is misdiagnosed, which can be the case in some talar bone injuries, it can take years to heal…
The most common instance of this happens with subtle injuries to the talar bone, so lets talk about that one first…
Why Ankle Pain May Be
The Result Of Talar
Bone Injury..
A Talar bone break can will usually occur due to high impact collisions…
The Talar bone is also subject to hairline fractures due to pressures placed on it by other bones. Running athletes are seen with this most commonly…
A sprinter can get a hairline fracture of the Talar bone and develop ankle pain by exploding off the block…
An endurance runner could come up with a hairline fracture in this area due to the pounding repetition and perhaps an ill fitting shoe…
Both of them could find that some of their trace minerals are depleted, so it follows that they will not only need to make sure this bone heals; they will need to adjust diet and supplementation at the same time to avoid ankle pain and further complications later…
Ankle Sprains Are
About Ligaments…
When an Ankle is sprained – it is the stretching or tearing of ligaments that are responsible for the ankle pain…
It will depend on diet, your general state of health, and the overall strength in your joint that will determine the extent of injury and how quickly you will heal…
Sprains can hurt worse than breaks and it is imperative to keep the swelling down and to learn to do home care, and if possible, care with a physio so that motion gets returned to the joint as soon as possible…
My own experience with the worse sprain I ever had was the result of a break fall in my martial arts practice that went wrong…
Instead of going all the way over my own arm like you do in what is called a ‘Break Fall’, I ‘barrel rolled’ landing ankle first. Four years on, remnants of that injury still bothered me. I was in chiropractic school, but the irony in all of this is that I never took serious time for myself to make sure it healed as it should- even with a whole chiropractic clinic and physio department available to me…
So, my advice is that you learn the R.I.C.E method and learn how much movement is good movement with a professional…
The result of ignoring your ankle can be ongoing joint pain…
Ligaments are tough and sinewy and act as connective tissue for the bones. Since a tear can leave the other surrounding bones of the foot out of balance, it may also be an idea to see an Activator Methods Chiropractor should there be one in your area…
They can keep you balanced so the effects of odd movement or limping will not have a negative effect on the rest of your body…
After an injury to that ankle it is not uncommon to come up with other pain and injury due to the whole of weight bearing balance being disrupted by ankle pain…
How Achilles Tendon
Injury Can Cause
Ankle Pain (And Is
An Emergency…)
This is an illustration of what happens when the Achilles Tendon rips…
The Achilles Tendon has the very important job of attaching your calf muscle to the calcaneous bone of your foot via the tendon…
And this allows you to walk…
If there are micro-tears in this tendon that go untreated and are continued to be stressed, overtime this will create more tearing – sometimes people are not aware of what is going on because it can present as a bothersome burning pain that will go away temporarily, until a huge amount of stress is put on it – the weekend warrior is good for this- and the tendon gets a major tear or rips completely…
If this tendon rips completely, you will not be able to walk…
- And at this point it is an emergency and you will need to get seen immediately…
This scenario occurred with an old friend of mine one weekend when her and a group of friends she worked her office job with went out to the park and celebrated their own ‘games day’…
They had invented several games, and among them was the ‘Skipathon’…
And that was how my friend got laid up, in a cast on crutches, for three months after surgery to reconnect her Achilles Tendon to her calcaneous (heel)…
And then there was rehab and the lovely and attractive giant boot she got to wear with all of her business suits upon her return to work…
Weekend warriors – if you are suffering from ankle pain and are experiencing burning at the back of your heel, please get it checked out, get the weight off of it and use the R.I.C.E. method as well…
Remember Achilles: part God, part human, greatest warrior that ever lived; shot in the heel and down he went…
If You Have Arthritis
In The Ankle…
Ankle pain, swelling, redness, tender to the touch, crepitus (cracking) in the joint are signs of arthritis in the ankle…
Not so different from injury…
But it will just start appearing and resolving and coming back again…
There are many different types of arthritic conditions as well, so I want to address the most common one that has to do directly with the joint; osteoarthritis…
First of all, if you have had an injury to the ankle, it is worth taking maximal care of this joint to avoid this situation later in life…
As I mentioned earlier, the ankle does not get as much circulation of blood despite being a major weight bearing joint. If the tissues begin to degenerate due to neglect post trauma, there will not only be a chronic ankle pain condition on the horizon, but cartilage will grow thin and stretched tendons and especially ligaments can and will weaken…
This can threaten your mobility…
The most striking scenario I ever witnessed was an elite athlete I used to know in my undergrad days…
He gained 200 lbs as a result of not knowing anything about diet after University was over, and not being able to move very well due to an ankle pain from an old injury that was incurred while playing basketball…
It was a scholarship program, and with scholarships, depending on the institution, there is always pressure for young athletes to perform; and sometimes their injuries do not get treated to the extent they should be…
Heel Pain And Swelling
Resulting In Ankle Pain…
While it is possible that the Achilles Tendon can cause heel pain as well as ankle pain due to altering the foot strike during walking…
There is an added dimension when we include the bursa at the back of the calcaneous bone (heel bone). The bursa is a fluid filled sac and is located under the Achilles Tendon so that the tendon does not rub on the bone (which would bring injury and pain on a constant basis…)
The bursa sac can become irritated, swollen and painful near the bottom of the foot; making walking painful…
If you have arthritis in the area of the ankle and the foot, the pain may also be caused by bone spurs due to tissue degeneration…
There is also a third condition (a less common one) that has to do with infection getting into the feet…
If you cut calloused skin off of your feet with a tool that has not been sanitized, or if you step on something outside, your feet can get an infected, and this will be most apparent in the heel, but can spread all over the foot…
You will need an anti-biotic ointment (natural or prescribed) to clear this up. Please pay prompt attention to this as it can infect your shoes, and leave you immobilized …
Natural Pain
Relief…
Over the counter as well as prescribed pain relief medications are fast acting and potent, but what happens if you need to take them to manage your pain over a period of years, or for the rest of your life…?
You may wish to do some research and look into some natural pain relief remedies that will not have the toxic effects on your internal organs that most pain medications do after a lengthy period of time…
I have provided some basic information regarding supplementation that provides natural pain relief to help get you started – just click on the link below…
Summarizing…
Although there is a variety of signs and symptoms that cause ankle pain, these are among the most common…
If your signs and symptoms do not match any of these that have been listed, make sure you get seen by a professional right away…
Take care of your ankles, they indirectly affect your:
- Feet…
- Knees…
- Hips…
- And more directly your mobility…
[Joint Pain] › [Ankle Pain]
Disclaimer – This is information on joint pain. I teach, but I do not diagnose, prescibe or treat people who contact me. You are responsible for your condition using your own best judgement combined with what you have learned. Just a heads up – bodies carry unusual differences from time to time, in saying that, you could be one of those rare and unusual beings; if you are in doubt, please contact a physician in your area, so you can rule it out.
Move Freely and Knowledgeably and Be Well!
Dr. Jo
P.S… “Greater certainty of your condition alone can be a powerful form of pain relief.”