Each year in the United States, sprained ankles send 2 million people to seek medical care. So this probably means the actual number of sprained ankles among Americans is much higher, as many deal with the issue without medical help — often to their detriment.
Whatever the final tally, suffice it to say that sprained ankles are common. Unfortunately, they can also be problematic. You have pain and limited mobility in the short term, and 70% of people with sprained ankles end up with residual disability.
At Aesthetic Podiatry & Sports Medicine Center, foot health experts Dr. Mariola Rivera and Dr. Lisa Shah and our team understand how important early and effective intervention is with sprained ankles.
For best results, we also believe in helping your body to heal on a cellular level, which is why we highly recommend MLS® laser therapy.
Here’s a look at how this FDA-cleared and noninvasive treatment can help you heal your sprained ankle faster, stronger, and with less pain.
MLS stands for Multiwave Locked System, which features two different wavelengths of energy:
This laser energy penetrates your tissues as light energy, which your cells absorb. Your cells then convert the light energy into cellular energy, helping them to repair the damage in your ankle more quickly.
This energy also encourages your blood vessels to open wider, which allows more healing and regenerative resources to access the damaged ligaments in your ankle. This helps to reduce inflammation, too.
With MLS laser therapy, we also deliver a pulsing 905 nanometer wavelength of energy that disrupts the pain signaling to help bring you relief from the discomfort of a sprained ankle.
So between the two wavelengths, our goal is to not only make you more comfortable during your recovery from a sprained ankle. We want to shrink your recovery timeline. As an added bonus, we also want to encourage your ankle to heal as strongly as possible to avoid chronic ankle instability.
As we’ve already mentioned, the good news is that MLS therapy treatments are noninvasive and pain-free. Each treatment lasts less than 30 minutes, and the number of treatments depends on the severity of your ankle sprain.
There are three grades of ankle sprains, and the higher the number, the more damage there is in the ligaments.
So if you have a Grade I ankle sprain, you might need only a few MLS laser treatments. A Grade III ankle sprain, on the other hand, might benefit from twice-weekly MLS laser treatments over the course of four weeks or longer.
Bear in mind that when you add MLS laser therapy to your sprained ankle treatment protocol, the goal is to shorten your recovery timeline. Without MLS laser therapy, you’re looking at a potentially longer, and more uncomfortable, recovery journey.
To heal an ankle sprain more quickly, we invite you to contact us online or by phone at one of our offices in Purchase or White Plains, New York, to schedule your MLS laser therapy consultation.
