People who’ve sprained an ankle are likely to sprain it again, writes Gretchen Reynolds for the New York Times, but there may be a “supremely low-tech” fix: balance training. An ankle sprain interferes with the neural receptors in the ligaments that transmit balance information to the brain. Even when the sprain is healed, balance can still remain impaired—increasing the chance of a future injury.
In sports, ankles are the most commonly injured body part — each year approximately eight million people sprain an ankle. Millions of those will then go on to sprain that same ankle, or their other ankle, in the future. “The recurrence rate for ankle sprains is at least 30 percent,” says Patrick McKeon, an assistant professor in the Division of Athletic Training at the University of Kentucky, “and depending on what numbers you use, it may be high as 80 percent.”
“There are neural receptors in ligaments,” says Jay Hertel, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Virginia and an expert on the ankle. When you damage the ligament, “you damage the neuro-receptors as well. Your brain no longer receives reliable signals” from the ankle about how your ankle and foot are positioned in relation to the ground. Your proprioception — your sense of your body’s position in space — is impaired. You’re less stable and more prone to falling over and re-injuring yourself.
A growing body of research suggests that many of those second (and often third and fourth) sprains could be avoided with an easy course of treatment. Stand on one leg. Try not to wobble. Hold for a minute. Repeat.
The treatment, simple as it is, can be quite beneficial
This is the essence of balance training, a supremely low-tech but increasingly well-documented approach to dealing with unstable ankles. A number of studies published since 2008 have shown that the treatment, simple as it is, can be quite beneficial.
Balance training uses instability to force you to use muscles that stabilize the body during movement. Equipment like stability balls, the vibrating platform, wobble boards, etc. all create that instability which causes more muscles to activate than if you were just standing on a stable surface.
At IC Sports Therapies, we have an array of balance-challenging equipment, a collection which is unique to our practice. We can help you with a program to retrain your brain, and re-establish balance in your life. Phone us today on 9477-3103.