If you’ve suffered any injury it’s important to take the right steps to care for the injury and facilitate your recovery.
This will help to ensure you heal faster and make a full recovery.
Of course, the most effective techniques to help with recovery will depend on what the injury is.
ACL Injuries
The Anterior Cruciate Ligament is an important ligament in your knee. This ligament plays a vital part in maintaining the correct position of the leg. Specifically, it stops you from rotating your leg too far in the wrong direction.
Injuries to the ACL are common for people involved in sports, especially if the sport involves sudden stops and turns.
That includes football, basketball, and even downhill skiing.
If you’ve suffered an injury to your ACL, you need to adopt these recovery techniques.
Ice It
When you injure your ACL you’ll usually hear a popping sound and then a sudden blast of pain. Your leg is likely to collapse under you.
It’s painful and will start swelling as inflammation kicks in. To reduce the swelling it’s a good idea to ice your knee for the first 24 hours.
When icing, wrap the ice in a towel so that it is not directly on your skin. Ice cools the area, decreasing blood flow and helping to prevent inflammation.
Massage
Manipulating the tissues and muscles around any injured area can help to reduce the stress on the ligament. Massage also increases blood flow which maximizes the number of nutrients available to the injury.
Being able to access nutrients is essential to a successful healing process. It’s worth visiting a specialist in remedial massage therapy.
As part of seeing a physio, you can also verify how bad the injury is. If you have torn the ligament completely you’ll probably need surgery to fix it.
Naturally, this will mean a visit to your doctor to be assessed and schedule the best possible surgery. This isn’t necessary for everyone.
Rest
For the first couple of days, you’re going to want to avoid putting any weight on your leg. This will strain your ACL further. That’s not desirable and will slow the healing process.
It’s best to keep it elevated as much of the time as possible and avoid placing any strain on it.
Exercise
Your physio will advise you regarding what exercises are most beneficial and when you can start putting weight on your leg again. An ACL injury can take 6-9 months to fully heal.
However, you can usually start light exercise within a few weeks. This means walking around and any other exercises your physio says are acceptable.
Although it can be frustrating, it’s advisable to do as your physio says, they know the most effective way to heal your injury and even strengthen the area. In time, you can even play your favourite sport again. But, ignore the physio and try to rush the recovery and you may never play sport again.
