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rubbish ankles: short and long term treatments?

cloudymind

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hi
my ankles has always been rubbish. one of the reasons why i preferred ski over some other sports.
luckily the left one seems to be less rubbish but the right one got sprained many times and i also fractured it in the past. the break was a minor one and never required surgery, just cast and crutches.
cartilage is ok, also damage to the ligaments is not too bad and all the specialists i saw told me reconstruction is not an option at the moment, just keep doing exercises.
it recently sprained again and never fully recovered, but now i re-injured it over the previous sprain.

symptoms are strange, different from when it fractured because are not located on broken bones. also when i rest it feels numb but not particularly painful, it only hurts when i try to move it or put weight. i saw my doctor who applied a plaster splint with ace bandages and plaster and referred to the ankle specialist to further investigate.
specialist told to keep immobilized and 100% non weight till the visit but will take a pair of weeks.

now the scan shows damage to the ligaments but apparently no complete tear, hope to have mri when go for the visit. on one side hope to finally have the reconstruction surgery couse it feels definitely non functional and unstable now. don't know if they usually prefer to perform it immediately or better wait to recover from the last injury?
i do wonder if it would be beneficial to take this splint off once the swelling reduces. at moment it feels ok but quite heavy.
 

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cloudymind

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will contact one with the results from the visit.
i have seen multiple PT because ligaments damage till now wasn't bad enough for surgical repair.
i keep exercising, infact sometimes overdid and made it worse and a piece of bone was pulled off (avulsion i think) or caused stress fractures.
last time a stability test was performed the ankle did look reasonably stable but pt suggested to wear a supportive bandage for sports.

just this time damage should be worse, wonder if doctor suggest to try again a PT cycle, would take months.
 

Tricia

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We have some PTs on this site, but I'm sure this is something you need to address with your own PT.

My ankles are not rubbish but I get a random clicking in my right ankle and am working on strengthening it.
I also need to have my bunion looked at on that right foot.
 

Rich_Ease_3051

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Never overestimate the body's ability to heal in the short term. Nor underestimate it's ability to heal in the long term.
 

Rich_Ease_3051

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Also, look at diet as a lever you can pull in addition to rest and physical therapy.

There are studies that say collagen rich diet like bone broth plus vitamin C can help with restoring ligaments and tendons. Other studies say muscle meat is as good or better than collagen food.

Do your own research, but just want to put it out there for you to look at.
 

martyg

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Also, look at diet as a lever you can pull in addition to rest and physical therapy.

There are studies that say collagen rich diet like bone broth plus vitamin C can help with restoring ligaments and tendons. Other studies say muscle meat is as good or better than collagen food.

Do your own research, but just want to put it out there for you to look at.

Subscribe to Inside Tracker if you want to get serious about diet.

If you get a blood draw once a year the trends, over a period of years, is compelling. This provides me with much more actionable data than what my normal doc provides.

I also have a second doc that was Steadman’s head of regenerative medicine. He likes what Inside Tracker provides.

 

Rich_Ease_3051

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Subscribe to Inside Tracker if you want to get serious about diet.

If you get a blood draw once a year the trends, over a period of years, is compelling. This provides me with much more actionable data than what my normal doc provides.

I also have a second doc that was Steadman’s head of regenerative medicine. He likes what Inside Tracker provides.

Can't imagine blood being able to detect improvement in ligaments and tendons and cartilage.

X-rays and MRI comparison of cartilage/tendon/ligaments from 2 points in time are probably a better gauge if a certain diet or non-diet intervention (human growth hormone, platelet rich plasma, etc) did their job improving those body parts.
 

martyg

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Can't imagine blood being able to detect improvement in ligaments and tendons and cartilage.

X-rays and MRI comparison of cartilage/tendon/ligaments from 2 points in time are probably a better gauge if a certain diet or non-diet intervention (human growth hormone, platelet rich plasma, etc) did their job improving those body parts.

It has nothings to do with detection. It has to do with your comment re diet.

All of the training in the world will go to waste if you do not create the optimal environment for cell division and growth of mitochondria. Diet is but one part of that.

Without analysis of your unique physiology your direction with diet is nothing more than a stab in the dark.
 

Rich_Ease_3051

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It has nothings to do with detection. It has to do with your comment re diet.

All of the training in the world will go to waste if you do not create the optimal environment for cell division and growth of mitochondria. Diet is but one part of that.

Without analysis of your unique physiology your direction with diet is nothing more than a stab in the dark.

Noted. But still, even with diet as a point of discussion, I don't agree that blood is good gauge to assess whatever you want to assess.

A blood test is just a snapshot of one point in time of your blood work. It doesn't say anything about your blood work or state of health for the rest of they year.

I dare say, it doesn't even capture your state of health in the 24 hours that you took the blood work.

The blood test is just your blood state in the moment your blood was drawn. It could change the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year.

Blood and human health is incredibly complex, in my opinion, with many downstream effects from certain interventions (be it drug, diet, stress, sleep, etc) affecting the state of your health from moment to moment.

For example, a fat fuck eating processed food his whole life can quickly change his state of health going from garbage food to eating organic real food in just a week or two, in my opinion. And this can happen as well going from one type of diet (vegetarian, vegan, carnivore, fruitarian, omnivore, or any combination thereof) to another. Of course, he still has to exercise and get enough sleep to turn around his general state of health. But just changing diet, I believe, can drastically change his life.

And in a lot of these things, the science hasn't been settled. Some scientific camps believe LDL and HDL and ApoB matter and are good markers of health. Some quarter believe having a "good marker" doesn't really count.

And then, there's the genetic factor. Some quarters say that your genetic predosposition should be aligned to whatever diet your adopting.

This is a nascent science that is evolving and there is no one answer, I believe, that can be drawn or inferred with just blood work assessement.
 
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martyg

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Noted. But still, even with diet as a point of discussion, I don't agree that blood is good gauge to assess whatever you want to assess.

A blood test is just a snapshot of one point in time of your blood work. It doesn't say anything about your blood work or state of health for the rest of they year.

I dare say, it doesn't even capture your state of health in the 24 hours that you took the blood work.

The blood test is just your blood state in the moment your blood was drawn. It could change the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year.

Blood and human health is incredibly complex, in my opinion, with many downstream effects from certain interventions (be it drug, diet, stress, sleep, etc) affecting the state of your health from moment to moment.

For example, a fat fuck eating processed food his whole life can quickly change his state of health going from garbage food to eating organic real food in just a week or two, in my opinion. Of course, he still has to exercise and get enough sleep to turn around his general state of health. But just changing diet, I believe, can drastically change his life.

See my comment, “If you get a blood draw once a year the trends, over a period of years, is compelling.”

Another interesting tool is a glucose meter. Set up a spreadsheet, eat various foods and stick yourself an hour after. Do this for a week.

My takeaways: red wine and Cheerios spikes my blood sugar like crazy. Eating a pint of high quality ice cream is like me eating a piece of salmon as far as blood sugar. Apples and sunflower seeds sends my blood sugar down.

Check out InsideTracker. A lot of MDs at the OTC and USOPC Medical Center like it.
 

Rich_Ease_3051

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My takeaways: red wine and Cheerios spikes my blood sugar like crazy. Eating a pint of high quality ice cream is like me eating a piece of salmon as far as blood sugar. Apples and sunflower seeds sends my blood sugar down.

Some quarters say blood sugar doesn't matter, but fasting glucose is more important.

I say nobody knows the truth when in comes to these things. This is nascent science.

The truth changes in time. Time being years and decades.
 

dbostedo

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Hey folks - A few posts were deleted for going too far off-topic, and getting snippy. Let's please try to keep this civil and on-topic. Thank you.
 
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cloudymind

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ouch! don't want to think about diet.... luckily at the moment blood sugar is under control but i'm pretty sure i heat and drink too much.
in the past i took various integrators but with no visible benefits.

anyway i spoke with a specialist and ligaments repair would be evaluated after proper recovery and PT sessions and consultation with the surgeon, she booked the visit to have a plaster cast applied for a few weeks, was a bit of a delusion as i hoped to be free sooner.
i then called a PT and obviously it's impossible by now to know how long would it take to have a definitive outcome. also explained that depending on the extent of the reconstruction it could need quite some times on crutches/cast.

so, clearly not immediate solutions for this boring injury. i really hoped at least to be out of crutches sooner as these are quite busy weeks.
now the foot feels great and is still very stable. infact i took ace bandages off and discovered that it's not really a splint but a closed cast, even if i was told the ankle was too swollen.
 

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ted

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In my experience people who have a history of ankle sprains tend to have a fibula head that needs manipulation.
The impingement there inhibits the peroneals and the foot sits inverted. The weakened peroneals then lead to more ankle sprains.
 
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cloudymind

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in the last few months my ankle got better. i'm happy i had it in a proper plaster cast because it really felt great. but then i was asked to choose between a walking cast and the plastic boot and i choose the boot because of the hot climate. but it has been a mistake because i have never been confortable in it and i think it has probably been useless.
anyway saw the PT and keep doing exercises. in my opinion now the ankle definitively is more stable. the PT instead insists i still need to work on it and i should be very careful on it.
ok probably not a perfect joint but still better than before having it fractured.
the surgeon explained that there is nothing to pinpoint for him to fix. i asked about having a complete reconstruction but no way.
 

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