Strains and sprains are painful injuries to muscles, tendons, and ligaments. They are typical workplace and sports injuries usually caused by overuse, improper technique, and lack of conditioning.
Here’s how they occur. Sprains are caused when a joint is forced to move into an unnatural position. For example, twisting your ankle causes a sprain to the ligaments around the ankle as the common is overstressed out of place.
Strains can occur when muscles are pulled, confused, or torn. When someone tries to lift something before warming up the power, the sudden pull on a cold muscle can cause a strain.
How Do We Avoid Strains and Sprains?
Wear Protective Footwear to reduce stress on your ankle-foot and leg joints.
Make sure your shoes fit your feet properly.
Avoid high-heeled shoes. The higher the heel, the more susceptible you are to a sprain.
Avoid activities for which you have not trained. Always warm up and stretch before doing work exercise or sports.
Do a good warm-up stretch and warm up your muscles before lifting. Slowly move the joints around and get them warmed up. Have good flexibility by gently stretching muscles and joints before subjecting them to stress stack your joints.
Properly align your arm and your legs. Twisting your limbs under load causes strains and sprains when you feel pain layoff. Pain is your body’s way of telling you that it needs to rest. Remind yourself to use good posture. Poor posture strains your lower back muscles.
Lift according to good lifting rules like never lift and twist, and decrease the distance you must stretch to lift a heavy object.
Get help when it might be too heavy.
And finally, know your body’s limits and stick to them.
How Do You Cope With Nerve Pain?
How to Treat a Sprain or Strain
Sprains(stretched torn ligament) and strains(torn muscle or tendon) are common, and luckily if they’re treated the same way.
What to do now?
Remember RICE(Rest Ice Compress Elevate).
- Rest
The injured body part lies low for a few days and lets the healing begin.
- Ice
The area for about 20 minutes at a time, followed by 20 minutes off.
- Compress
In the area between icing, wrap the injury in an elastic wrap such as an ace bandage to combat swellings.
- Elevate
The injured body part upon pillows, so it’s above heart level.
What to do next?
Ice and elevate for 20 minutes at a time at least four times a day until the pain and swelling go away.
Ask your pediatrician about pain relievers such as ibuprofen.
Call your doctor if your child gets a fever which is a sign of infection or if the pain is intense or doesn’t improve in a day or two. You could have a severe sprain or even a fracture.
Lower Back Sprains and Strains
Muscle strains and ligament sprains are among the most common causes of lower back pain. Although strains and sprains may have similar symptoms, they involve different structures of your body.
The lumbar spine or lower back is very mobile and bears much of the body’s weight which is why it is prone to various injuries. Complex systems of back muscles work together to allow movement and support your spine.
Low back strains occur when muscles or tendons are injured. Strains are also called pulled muscles. Spinal ligaments are strong fibrous bands that protect your vertebrae and keep them together.
Low back sprains occur when ligaments are stretched or torn.
Back Sprain & Back Strain Treatment
Golf and tennis are two of the most popular recreational activities. Still, the twisting activity of the golf swing or a forehand or backhand generates tremendous torque across the spine and causes injury.
Fortunately, most of these injuries are usually a sprain or strain, which will improve.
Rest, ice, over-the-counter medication and activity modification are the mainstays of initial treatment.
However, a small percentage of patients will develop severe neck or back pain, arm pain, leg pain, numbness, tingling or weakness.
These symptoms can indicate that you have a more severe problem, such as a pinched nerve or a herniated disc.
If you have any of these symptoms, you should consult one of our specialists at Sports & Spinal Solutions Clinic to evaluate you.
We have the most up-to-date techniques to get you back on the golf course or the tennis court with as little downtime as possible.
Shoulder Sprains and Strains
Sitting on a chair, place the hand of your affected shoulder on the small cozy ball and your other hand on top. Reach forward with pressure from both hands until you reach the barrier and limitation of a stretching or pulling sensation that is short of pain.
Hold it there for a second and return to the start position. Repeat this for ten repetitions doing three sets three times per day. This exercise can help improve the mobility of your stiff shoulder after you have strained or injured it.
If you’re unsure about the exercise or have uncertainty about where you’re at with your shoulder injury, book an appointment to check things out.
Sprains and Strains at your Workplace
This article is about sprains and strains. To keep it brief, they cost businesses money 405 million a year at last count, not to mention the personal impact on those who are injured.
We all know there’s a problem. And you may feel that you have tried everything and it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
But we have five simple steps to stop sprain and strain injuries from happening in the first place.
- Find the risk factors. That means the things that cause the injuries. Look out for Forceful exertions. It is pushing, pulling, lifting, and gripping. Awkward postures. Bending, over reaching, arching back, twisting. Vibrations. To your hand and arm, or whole body. Repetition. Things you do again and again and again. Duration. How long does this one movement go on? Twenty minutes, an hour, a day?
- Get your workers involved. Ask them questions like What makes you sore at work? And which job do you avoid doing? We know that getting people involved improves outcomes; get talking and understand what your staff think and want.
- Don’t rely on safe lifting training. It is not enough. You and your workers might bend at the knees and keep your back straight, but you haven’t changed the risk factors! We have lots of research that back this up, so change the risk factors and don’t just train workers to lift safely. It just won’t work.
- Use higher-level controls that do reduce the risk factors. This is one of the best ways to reduce injury. Elimination sees you getting rid of the hazard altogether. This is the best way to minimize risk. For example, if trimming hedges hurt your workers, then get rid of the walls. Put in some lovely native bushes instead. When elimination is impossible, look to design the risk like putting an engineering solution in place—for example, installing a hydraulic lifting device for lifting heavy equipment from a truck or ute. Or, use substitution so that a safer way, tools or equipment can be used,890-WTYP\E like replacing heavy steel vehicle ramps with lighter alloy ramps. These three approaches are the most effective at reducing the risks because they don’t rely on people doing the right thing. They fix the problem at the source.
- Get a simple risk management approach happening. In plain English: identify, assess, control, review. And that’s where we can help you.
