If you’re like most people, odds are you’ve rolled your ankle at one point or another. It’s never a pleasant feeling, but it is a somewhat unique sensation because you can’t really roll another area of your body like you can your ankle. So what’s going on when you roll your ankle, and how can you prevent against these rolls and sprains? We explain what’s happening when you roll your ankle in today’s blog.
Rolling Your Ankle
So what’s going on inside your body when you roll your ankle? When this action occurs, you’re injuring the supportive ankle ligaments on the sides of your ankle joint that help to stabilize the area. As you walk, these ligaments help to stabilize your ankle joint and support it as you navigate flat or uneven terrain. However, if you step on a jagged surface or an indentation in the ground, these supportive ligaments can become overloaded with stress as the weight of your body is put on your foot.
When the ligaments become overloaded, then ankle joint buckles to one side, and during this process the supportive ankle ligaments become stretched and torn. The rolling sensation is that of your ankle ligaments being stretched beyond their normal limit. In very mild cases, the ligaments may feel a little uncomfortable for a few minutes or hours, and in the most severe cases, you may being dealing with significant tearing of these supportive ankle ligaments.
The common example we always use for illustrating this phenomena is if you were to imagine a plastic straw standing upright on a table. If you put your hand flat on the top of the upright straw, you could put a decent amount of pressure on the straw before it became overloaded with stress and a bend formed somewhere in the straw. When you release pressure, the straw returns to its normal position, but if you tried to again put downward pressure on the upright straw, you would not be able to put as much stress on the straw before it bent at the previous bend site. The straw was damaged and can no longer support as much stress before bending. That’s essentially what’s going on in your ankle. After you roll your ankle once, you’re more likely to do it again because the ligaments are damaged or torn.
Luckily, we can do more to restore strength to our ankle ligaments than we can the bent straw. Through controlled exercise, physical therapy and stretching routines, we can gradually restrengthen our ankle ligaments and ensure they are up to the task of supporting the stress we put on them. Don’t just let time run its course, because although pain may fade, you won’t regain stability and confidence in your ankle until you actively target the area, and the best way to do that is through physical therapy.
So if you chronically roll your ankles, or you’ve never really been able to fully recover from a previous ankle sprain, reach out to Dr. Silverman to help target those ligaments and restore confidence in your feet.