Almost no one talks about ligament injuries, but they are incredibly important.
We see three main kinds of ligament injuries.
- Car accident injuries
- Sports injuries
- Everyday injuries (for example, falling down the stairs)
When these happen, the most common undiagnosed injury is a ligament injury. When it’s not diagnosed, it can’t be treated properly.
This is so important because, while ligament injuries never heal to 100%, how close you get to 100% is based on the care you receive. If they’re not treated the right way, they are never going to heal the right way, and you’re going to have more and more chronic conditions that develop over time and over the years.
Ligaments have collagen and elastin at the same time. When you have an injury, you don’t reform a elastin, just collagen. This means that the tendon itself is going to be weaker, your body then starts using other muscle groups to try to compensate, and we get this compensatory movement patterns, which changes your biomechanics.
When this is unchecked, this goes throughout your whole body.
An issue in your knee is now going to affect your lower leg, your thigh, your low back, your hips, and then eventually all the way up to your neck because your body’s way of holding your movement and holding your normal weight when it’s doing proper or normal functions is not going to be the same.
It has to be altered because we have this weakness due to the injury in the tendon or the ligament.
We have to make sure that we keep that in mind when doing proper treatment, otherwise we’re never going to get the outcome measures.
This is why it’s so important to understand this and to make sure you go to someone who understands these injuries and has the proper treatment protocols in place to make sure you get the best results possible.