You sprained your ankle 15 years ago, why should it
matter now?
Dr. Elton Clemence- Family First Chiropractic and Wellness 403-347-3261
Ankles. We have two of them. The vast majority of patients I see
have sprained one of them at some point in their lives. This is a
question I normally leave to the end of the consultation questions, normally
receiving a confused look… I can see the cogs turning in my thinking
patients head, “…What? My ankles? Really, what has that got to do with my
back…”. Well, it has everything to do with your back pain. It has
everything to do with your knee pain, your hip pain, your neck pain, your
shoulder pain, you name it pain. Our feet and ankles are crucial aspects
of our bodies that are far too often overlooked.
The soles of our feet have 200,000 receptors. Our foot and
ankle complex has 26 bones, with one quarter of the bones in our body in our
feet (!). There are 33 joints (!!) and more than 100 muscles, tendons and
ligaments (!!!). All these structures within the ankle and feet are
neurological powerhouses when it comes to sending our nervous system and brain
information about where we are in space, the terrain we are walking on, how to
safely move and change direction, plus many more. If your car had one or
two dodgy tires, how would your car drive? Not as well as it should. And
what’s more, you wouldn’t put up with it. The same applies to our feet
and ankles. If we have disrupted the information cycle between our feet
and ankles and brain at any point during our lives, this can have ramifications
for the rest of body, immediately or later on in the future.
When you sprain an ankle, it significantly changes the way that
you walk. It’s obvious at the beginning, but as time progresses and it
begins to heal and you can walk more ‘normally’ again. However, it doesn’t mean
that the ankle and foot have been properly rehabilitated back into a fully
functional part of the body. Your nervous system won’t think so, and will
be protective of it without you even realizing. These can cause potential
problems later on, with many people re-spraining the same ankle over and over
again. The vicious cycle begin because the neurological information
systems keeps becoming disrupted, and it goes on.
The bottom line is our ankle and feet are crucial to the optimum
function of the body. Pay attention to those ankle sprains, they might be more
important that you think!
