How Barley Wellness Helps Athletes Excel | Chiropractor for Athletes in Fairhaven, MA
Hi, everyone. My name is Dr. Dennis barley, and I’m here at barley wellness to talk about athletes. We take care of all type of athletes here at barley wellness. From a structural framework, we look at the injured site.
So let me talk about what happens when someone comes in with an injury from a sporting event. If that joint is an ankle or a knee, or a shoulder, or a hip, or even the spine, wrist or elbow, we will take a take doing a consultation, find out the mechanism of injury, find out how that injury occurred, and then do a thorough examination not only on the site of injury, let’s say we injured our wrist, we’ve not only do do the wrist itself, examine the wrist itself, but we would also examine what we call the kinetic chain, meaning the muscles and bones that and nerves that go all the way down to the wrist. So we’d even start up at the neck and take a look and see if there are any subluxations or irritations to the to the nerve roots that may be causing a deficit in a muscle so that that muscle no longer functions at its optimal. So that then that muscle develops a strain, or, you know, other or a weakness, and we address it there.
Many of the treatments that we use, here we have we have a multitude of treatments. And today, what I’m going to talk about specifically at barley wellness is that if we suspect a fracture, then we will take X rays we have digital X rays here on site. After that examination and X rays is if everything looks okay to begin treatment, then we’ll start treating the the athlete. Today I’m going to talk about ligament sprains.
Now, a lot of people are confused about what a sprain is compared to what a muscle strain is. So a ligamentous sprain is when the tissue that holds two bones or the joint together, is damaged in some fashion. The ligament is a sprain of a ligament. They’re tough bands of fibrous tissue that connects two bones together. And the most common location for a sprain typically is the ankle. And the immediate, you know, mnemonic that you use for taking care of an ankle is rice, Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation to get the a edema and swelling out of out of that area. Some people say price free where you protect the area.
So if I sprained a shoulder or an elbow that I may put in a sling and and create protection, or a brace. A ligament is strain. There are three grades to those those sprains. Grade One is a mild sprain, it can be successfully treated at home with ice and rest. There’s what’s happened there is there’s a little bit of stretching of the ligament. In the grade two sprain, there’s more than just a stretching, but there is some tearing of ligamentous tissue. And in the grade three, sprain there is full tearing of ligamentous tissue, many times that will require surgical intervention. Not always, but many times because you never want to let a sprain go if you don’t treat an ankle correctly or a joint that’s been sprained correctly. What’s happened there is those two bones have been shifted out of alignment, let’s say the ligament is tissue stretches or a tears a couple of those fibers tear. What we’ve got left in here in between is a Grade B or C material as opposed to the ligamentous tissue and I’m using my hands to illustrate that fact. And what what why it’s important to realign the joints of let’s say an ankle or a knee is so that tissue can heal with Grade A material as best it can.
So how do you how can you tell whether you’ve got a grade one spring which is just you know you’ve you’ve hurt you’ve hurt yourself? Let’s say your running and you twisted an ankle off of a curb, or you were playing soccer and you twisted the ankle. A mild sprain again that grade one sprain is just going to be some tenderness, there will be some swelling, some stiffness, and the ankle feels stable enough. And it’s usually possible to walk with minimal pain. A grade two, on the other hand is more severe. It’s not a full tear, but it’s an incomplete tear. It’s moderate pain, swelling, bruising, inability to walk with a normal gait is generally what we see. And that patient may need crutches and bracing, or taping, etc. A grade three, again, we probably would x ray to determine and diagnose if there’s a fracture in the area, and then refer them out for medical intervention. And again, if this ligamentous tissue doesn’t heal exactly where it should that joint becomes an unstable joint over time, whereas in tears, and we can have degenerative effects degenerative arthritis, down the road.
There are four types of of knee sprains that occur. There’s a medial collateral ligament sprain, the medial collateral ligament is on the inside of the knee, in the anterior cruciate ligament, it’s called the cruciate ligament, because it’s X shaped, we have a lot of injuries in sports, especially especially female athletes in soccer, they’ll have a lot of ACL or anterior cruciate ligament issues. There are some posterior cruciate ligament, and that can also get injured but it’s less common than the ACL. And then the lateral collateral ligament which is on the outside of the knee, so you can sprain those, or unfortunately, you can tear those and have to have some sort of intervention. Medically, typically surgical.
There are two types of ankle sprains and basically, there’s an E version sprain which occurs when the ankle rolls outward, and a tears the inside or the deltoid ligament of the ankle. So on the inside of the ankle, the ankle, turns out and causes a deltoid ligament tear, or irritation or stretch or sprain. And then the inversion again, inversion means that the the twist the foot inward, the ankle rolls, so those are very, very much more common. A lot of times you’re chant tearing the anterior talofibular ligament, the calcaneal fibular ligament and the posterior talofibular ligament, or your spraining that those ligaments very very common. Typically, you know that’s on the outside of the leg in the inversion means that the heel has gone in e-version ankle sprain means that the heel has gone outward.
So what is the difference between a sprain and a strain? A sprain injures the bands of tissues that connect to bones together, while a strain is muscular in nature. Remember, sprain is ligamentous strain is muscular, can involve the belly of the muscle, or the tendons of the muscle. The belly of the muscle, if I were to take the biceps most muscle and we have that big mound here is not so big on me. But that big mound here is called the bicep muscle. And the tendon attaches in here and attaches up here. So those are two tenderness attachments to the muscle. If you have any straining of that muscle, where you’ve strained some fibers of that muscle, that can be a great one or a mild, mild damage to the individual muscle fibers, typically less than 5% of those fibers and it causes minimal loss of strength.
A grade two strain is more extensive. We’ve we’ve torn more fibers, we may have real difficulty, you know using that bicep muscle, and of course a grade three is when the tendon or the or the muscle has been fully ruptured. And that is not a good thing. You may have heard of tennis players who have an Achilles tendon rupture while they’re playing tennis feels like they had a gunshot to the back of their calf. And all of a sudden they recognize that their Achilles tendon is not functional and that requires surgery. So the treatment for both ligament sprains and muscle strains is that we again we’ll assess what’s happened we’ll learn the mechanism of injury through the consultation with you. We will do an examination and again keying in on not just the injured area, but the kinetic chain those joints above and below that injured area. And the nerve innervation from the spine to that area. And then if there’s severe enough sprain, we may take an x ray. One of those sprains, I mentioned, the e-version sprain where it sprains the inside, tears the inside there, the deltoid ligament, there is a bone down here called the fibula. Many times when that e-version sprain occurs, that fibula at the bottom cracks, and we have a fracture there. So we’ll do our X rays with our digital X ray and see if there’s any fractures. And if there is we’ll refer you out to the proper medical professional. And if there isn’t, then we will start the rehabilitative process.
Barley Wellness helps athletes excel and what we will do are adjustments and checking out the entire kinetic chain. Okay. Starting at the spine all the way down and all the way back up. Physical therapeutics if necessary. Sometimes just massage will or work on it and we will show you at home exercise and massage to do we sometimes can use a night splint on our on our wrists so that we we we don’t overdo it. We have this brace called the Joe Pat brace, it’s a band that goes around here stabilizes the tendons of the muscles can be used without irritating that tendon any further. We can do soft tissue instrument assisted mobilization, therapeutic exercises, cryotherapy on the area, and any other forms of therapy, exercise therapeutics that we can utilize to help you the athlete get in shape and healthy sooner.
We also spend a lot of time with athletes on nutrition and the proper nutrition to give their bodies the best chance of performing it performing at their best. Again, there’s there’s there’s set amounts of protein that everyone requires their macronutrients, your protein, your fat and your carbohydrates. And there are macronutrient recommended daily allowances for fat and proteins. And we advise upon that we also advise upon what healthy carbohydrates you should be taking and what if any mineral supplementation you need to take also. Suppose the micronutrients you know, your vitamins and minerals are vitally important to the athlete as well as hydration. So thanks. We’ll talk to you soon and take care
