Lounging around on the couch waiting for your broken ankle to heal might seem like a dream. After all, who can resist the delicious temptations of watching your favorite movies and TV shows, all while resting on your couch with your favorite meal balanced on your lap?
Fast-forward just a few days later, and your “restful” recovery might begin to feel more like a prison sentence. You’re going out of your mind with boredom – and you’re anxiously looking for ways to speed up your broken ankle recovery time.
Before you resort to drastic measures, heed this warning: your foot is going to take its sweet time recovering. No matter what plans or desires you might have for your future healthy ankle, your foot is going to take all the time it needs to get itself back on track. So don’t pressure your ankle to start carrying its weight before it’s ready – because you’ll just end right back on that couch again.
If your doctor didn’t already tell you how long your ankle needs to heal, note that you should expect to cater to your ankle’s needs for the next year or so. However, you can expect to see the following from your broken ankle recovery time:
If the ankle was a simple break, you should expect to be healed in a minimum of three months. However, if you smoke, it’s important to note that healing will generally take longer. Therefore, if you’re a smoker with a broken ankle, expect healing time to extend for another month past the minimum three months.
If there were complications in your broken ankle (for example, other bones were dislocated or there were several breaks), you’re looking at a healing time of six months to a year.
Note that this healing time will include physical therapy and plenty of doctor’s appointments, so make sure you like your doctor – you’ll be seeing his or her face a lot!
Now that we’ve supplied a final definition of broken ankle recovery time, let’s focus on the tips you can use to hurry the healing:
Elevate your foot as often as possible. Invest in comfy and bright pillows, as these will lift your mood when you’re going through your broken ankle healing.
Buy a foot bath. Fill it up with warm, swirling water, and soak your foot in it as often as possible (this will be done once your cast is off, of course). After taking the warm foot bath, apply an ice pack to your ankle. The warm water loosens and relaxes muscles, while the ice pack eases any swelling that might occur.
Invest in a good bone supplement. Nutrition is key to healing, and a bone supplement will help hurry up healing time. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get a high-quality bone supplement; Wal-Mart and Target both carry their own versions of popular supplement brands. Make sure your bone supplement has magnesium as well as plenty of calcium, as magnesium helps the body’s absorbency of the calcium.
Avoid foods that could rob your body of its healing powers. Many studies indicate that patients recovering from a broken ankle should avoid alcohol, sugar, and even pain relievers like aspirin and ibuprofen.
As previously mentioned, smoking can increase your healing time. Therefore, if you’re a smoker, consider quitting for good. You don’t want to do serious damage to your body while attempting to hurry up your broken ankle healing!
Use these tips for faster broken ankle recovery, and you’ll be back on your feet in no time.