This is just a quick video to talk about what you should do with a soft tissue
sprain or acute injury to your ankle. It’s to follow on from Part One, which is whether
or not you should have got an X-ray. I hope you find this useful in helping with the acute first
few days of what to do. My name, Steph, and I'm one of the physios at sports-injury-physio.com,
where you can get an online assessment for your injury and a personalised rehab plan.
If this is something that interests you, then have a look at the description of this video
and the link to the website is in there. Let's say you don't have a fracture,
so you've either been to A&E and you've come back, it's not fractured, but it's still really sore,
or you've decided you don't need to go to A&E actually, you can just rest it. What now? So, you
go into your acute soft tissue injury management, which these days is called ‘PEACE and LOVE’. What
I hear you say is that ‘Well, years ago it used to be called ICE: ice, compress, elevate.’ Everyone
knew it. It was easy to remember. Then it became RICE: ‘rest, ice, compress, elevate’. Then PRICE:
‘protect, rest, ice, compress, elevate’. And then, in about 2012, they decided to add in
the O and the L to make it POLICE, which was ‘protect, optimally load, ice, compress, elevate’.
And in the last couple of years, through more and more research, they've decided to call the
acronym ‘PEACE and LOVE’, which is clearly a lot longer. It's harder to remember what it means,
but actually really good advice for soft tissue injury. PEACE refers to the first three days,
or the acute kind of stuff when you've just injured it. So, that's when there’ll be swelling.
There’ll be … there might be bruising. There might be some bleeding in the joint. There
might be … you know, those more acute symptoms. And the inflammation, which is the start of the
inflam ... the healing process. LOVE refers to the stuff you do once that acute bit has settled down.
So, your acute stuff, you've just injured it, so, the first few days: P stands for ‘protect it’. So,
you need to ... you do need to rest it and look after it. If you need to use crutches,
you use crutches. If you need to use a support, use a support. Protect the injury in the first
few days. And then E is still ‘elevate’. So, if it's your ankle, you want to put it up on
a footstool, for example, or lie on your front with some pillows behind you, with your foot up
behind you, so you could elevate it and help with that swelling. A is ‘avoid anti-inflammatories’.
I still hear so many people ... have an injury ... take some ibuprofen. Well, think about it.
Inflammation is the beginning of your healing process. It kickstarts your body into healing the
injured tissue. You don't want to disrupt that in the first few days. You take an anti-inflammatory,
it's going to dull down your own healing process. So, A is ‘avoid anti-inflammatories’. And then
C is still ‘compress’. And the second E is then ‘educate’. So,
learn about what you're going to be doing for your injury to get it better.
The LOVE portion of this acronym is for the second lot of stuff you do after that initial
PEACE - stuff is settled. So, this is once you have your injuries calmed down a little bit
and you're ready to rehab it and try and get it better. L stands for ‘load’, and it’s so important
to do the right load at the right time. And this is the sort of thing we physios can help you with.
You know, we can look at things and decide whether you should be sticking to weight-bearing with body
weight only, or whether you're ready to move on to resistance exercises or weighted exercises,
or even when you're ready to move on to impact and jumping and running and changing direction.
It all has to be done at the right time, in the right order, so that you can get
your ankle nice and strong again and hopefully avoid any further injury. O is a strange one.
It stands for ‘optimism’. And this is because they've done a whole load of research looking
at people's attitude towards their injury. And they found that people who are more optimistic
make a quicker and better recovery than those who are either really scared, really anxious, or what
they call ‘catastrophise’ about their injury, as in think about it all the time and have it rule
their lives. So, O is for ‘optimism’, and that's really about your attitude towards recovery.
V stands for ‘vascularisation’. Again, one of these ones, I think they just put in to
fit with the acronym. But anyway, this is how cardiovascular recovery … or the cardiovascular
recovery you can do while you're still injured and maybe perhaps not able to run. So, it will be,
for your ankle, things like going swimming or, if you don't have too much swelling,
then doing cycling or bike stuff so that you try and get your cardiovascular system going again,
which will improve your fitness anyway, improve your blood flow to the area and help your injury
along. And then finally, E is for ‘exercise’. And there's a lot of strong evidence to show that
exercise, the right sort of strengthening, the right sort of balance - looking at static balance,
dynamic balance - looking at getting you back into your sport-specific movements that you need to do,
but at the right time with the right amount of load. Exercise has been shown to really improve
not only your recovery but improve your chances that this injury isn't going to happen again.
I hope you found that useful! Once again, if you need any more information or you
want us to have a look at your injury, then please do get in touch with us.
The link to the website is in the description. And good luck! I hope this gets you back on the pitch
or back on the road as quickly as possible. And I hope that your injury gets better very, very soon.