If you have recently sprained your ankle, you might have missed being able to participate in your favorite sports or workouts, or you may have been unable to do your job because it requires too much physical labor. This means that you are probably ready to get back on your ankle and to get back into what you were doing before as soon as possible, but you have to be careful if you don't want to re-injure your ankle. Luckily, following these steps can help. 

See a Doctor

Even if your ankle is feeling better, it is a good idea to see a foot and ankle specialist before you return to sports, physical labor or other activities that could put unnecessary stress on it. Then, you can ensure that you are fully cleared. Otherwise, you could do too much too soon and could re-injure your ankle, possibly causing even more damage this time.

Consider Physical Therapy

If you have had to stay off of your ankle for an extended period of time because of your injury, or if your ankle injury was particularly severe, it may be a good idea to go through physical therapy. Then, you can ease your ankle into performing these activities, which can help you prevent a re-injury.

Tape it Up

Once your ankle has been sprained, it can be more prone to future injuries than it ever was before. This means that you should protect it when you participate in physical activity. One good method is "taping" your ankle, which means that you use tape to provide your ankle with extra support. This can help hold your ankle in the proper position while you're working out, playing sports or otherwise participating in physical activity. To do this, simply use medical pads to wrap your ankle, then use athletic tape to tightly tape up your ankle and lower calf.

Take it Easy

Even though you might be ready and raring to go, it's best to take it slow and easy when returning to physical activity. If you feel any pain in your ankle, you should discontinue the activity immediately.

Avoid Taking Pain Medication

You might be thinking about taking pain medication before participating in any activity because you don't want to feel any pain from your ankle. However, it's actually best to avoid doing so. Otherwise, the medication could numb the pain, which means that you might not realize that you are injuring your ankle and could continue using it when you shouldn't.

You might be ready to get back in action after your sprained ankle, but you should be careful. These are a few steps that you should take if you want to avoid re-injury.

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