If your ankles twist over towards the inside too easily, you may have a condition known as ankle instability. Needless to say, this causes ankle pain when your ankle is suddenly turned to the inside.
What is ankle instability? It’s a condition that develops over time after you’ve had many ankle sprains. Sprains occur when the outside, or lateral side, of your ankle simply gives way. This can happen when you’re standing still, but it’s more likely to happen and cause ankle pain and ankle instability when you’re walking or doing some other activity.
Sports activities such as running, jogging, or even power walking can cause ankle instability which leads to ankle pain. How do you know if you have ankle instability? You may have it if you have…
- Turned your ankle several times, especially on surfaces that are uneven, or in sports activities
- Chronic ankle pain accompanied by some swelling
- Ankle pain or tender areas on the ankle
Normally, ankle sprains heal fairly quickly. However, if you sprain your ankle again before the previous sprain has healed or if the previous sprain hasn’t been properly treated, then you may stretch or tear some of the ligaments in your ankle.
Torn or stretched ligaments are risky to walk on because they affect your balance—you can fall more easily when you’re walking or running with ankle pain due to ankle instability.
In order to heal your ankle properly, you need to see the podiatrist and get proper rehabilitation so that you can strengthen the muscles around your ankle so that the tissues within your ankle that affect balance can heal properly. A custom bio-mechanical orthotic will control the instability of the ankle and neutralize the ankle joint.
Unfortunately, the more you sprain your ankles, the more likely you are to develop chronic ankle instability. This means that your ankle will be more likely to give way in the future. That is why rehabilitation is so very important—so you will be less likely to suffer ankle sprains resulting in ankle pain in the future.
Here’s what’s happening in your ankle: every successive sprain stretches your ligaments further, thus weakening them. When this happens over and over, you end up with an ankle that is likely to develop more problems.
