Help for Ankle Pain in Calgary
While there are many potential causes of ankle pain, this article will focus on addressing non-traumatic ankle discomfort (e.g. there has been no trauma where you rolled your ankle recently or been hit in the lower leg with your foot planted). These are cases where you experience sudden onset of the ankle pain, but you’re not sure what you did to cause it.
Is It a Mobility or Stability Issue?
If you have ankle pain, we want to diagnose whether it is a mobility or stability issue. To do that, we use ankle flexibility tests. We may have you stand about three or four inches from the wall and drive your knee toward the wall to check the flexibility of your ankle, and see if there’s a discrepancy. If it’s equal side to side, and you only have one-sided ankle pain, then it could be tightness that’s contributing to your discomfort.
Sometimes we’ll see that the side with a lot of pain will have much less mobility. You may be two or three inches further from the wall on the side that’s sore.The doctor will palpate the ankle to feel tenderness and restriction of joint motion. When you find altered motion, you’ll want to get more mobility through that ankle and foot. Correcting the mobility of the foot stops you from overloading the area of pain when you’re walking and moving throughout the day.
How Chiropractic Care May Help
The ankle consists of three different joints that connect the lower leg bones to the foot. Chiropractic adjustments of these joints can provide relief and restoration of function. This treatment is best supported by specific home exercises that maintain mobility and strengthen through an active range of motion.
A Patient Success Story
One of Dr. Ford‘s patients had on and off front-sided ankle pain whenever she was doing any form of squatting activity. He adjusted her ankle as it had lost the normal mobility and then he demonstrated some home care mobilizations for her to support this new movement. Dr. Ford also used different soft tissue techniques to release muscle tension in the lower leg. Combining these specific treatments with the home care regimen significantly improved the patient’s ankle motion.
She can once again do a full pistol squat. This is a challenging movement where you squat lowering your buttocks all the way down using one leg with the other leg extended forward. It is not only a demonstration of excellent strength but ankle mobility and stability of the supporting leg.
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If you have ankle pain, we want to help you return to your favorite activities comfortably.
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