I sprained my ankle 24 days ago, for the first time. It was a mild sprain, and happened during soccer practice. There was no fracture or bruising or swelling. It's still not back to 100% though.

Depending on who I talk to or what article I read, some people say the mild sprains take only one week to heal, the sergeant in the med group I talked to said up to six weeks, and someone else told me it took six months for his to heal.

My ankle has no pain anymore, and I can run on it now. I went hiking and hunting this weekend. But it's still not as flexible as the other ankle which has never been sprained. If I try to stretch it all the way as the other one, it only goes about 95% as far and then I have discomfort. Is this out of the ordinary for sprains? How long will it take to go back to the way it was before I sprained it?

If anyone can offer some input, I would appreciate it.

The SO sprained hers back at the beginning of summer and just a couple weeks ago started feeling better.

A bad one may never be the same.

How much better? Back to 100% perfect, or just no pain anymore?

87 days

Arent some sprains actually worse than some breaks?

Yup. It sux.

What kind of PT have you been doing?

I fucked up mine 4 years ago. It's never been the same.

Just keep stretching, walking hiking running and ice as required.
Everybody is different.

I turned my ankle stumbling on the stairs. No issues at first, but over the next 2 years I have had numbness, pain, strange sensations like hot sandpaper rubbing my skin, and aches and pains that come and go, and move around. It is very slowly getting better, but I think it will be years.

I had my first sprained ankle last year at 51 years old. It was 4 months before it felt normal again.

This. And prone to future sprains.

I slipped on ice in during the winter and it took 6 months for mine to be fully healed.

Going on 2.5 months after a very bad sprain. It's still swollen a bit, but it's better than my whole foot being purple.

I broke my foot & sprained my ankle 3 weeks ago today. The break is not much of a problem but I still can not put any weight at all on my ankle. I'm hoping to just be able to walk with a cane in another 3 or 4 weeks.

QFT,

I fell in april down a cliff, still feel pain in my ankle & knee.

Mine took at least a year to fully heal.

My issue was this:
-Injured it during football
-It was embarrassing being benched and I wanted to play.
-Each year I would resprain it because I tried to be active.
-It finally healed after I decided not to play football my senior year.

That was almost 7 years ago. It still clicks occasionally, and I feel the arthritis depending on the weather.

But I can still run a 5k with no pain, I can still lift and sprint. It just doesn't feel the same as it once did though.

Obviously playing soccer you aren't pushing sleds/linemen. So you may heal up faster.

6-8 weeks was about my norm while playing soccer/racing motocross the be back competing.  I likely should have stopped doing both for longer.  I had air casts for both ankles.  I was usually wearing one or the other

18-24 months.  You will be fine for months then catch the sole of your shoe on a step and it all comes back, not as bad but it you'll walk funny for a couple days.  It was just over two years before I could run and not worry about it.

Depends.  

If you sprain it and walk on it...months.  Like, wobble for 2 months, sore for 3-4 months.  


If you sprain it and take care of it...1-2 weeks, sore for 3-4.  


Those first 24-72 will tell the tale.  If you didn't take care of it, it's gonna be a couple months.  Sadly.  

Tore my ankle up (with no break) when I played baseball in college and even with full on rest and rehab took three months to get back on the field and a total of six months to be 100%.

And will make you more prone to knee injuries through a combination of being unstable and the glutes actually stop activating properly.

Integrated training utilizing balancing exercises will increase stability through motor unit activation/motor unit recruitment/neurological aspects.

I sprained my ankle rather severely.  It took a few weeks to recovery 50%, a few months to get to 80%, a year to get 90%.  Over the following 2 years (three total) I notice small but steady improvement to 99.9%.  Even a year post-sprain, my sprained ankle was noticeably swollen. Now, 5 - 6 post injury, one is indistinguishable from the other.

True

Can take months or longer

This.

I had a very bad sprain about 15yrs ago. Tore every ligament in my ankle except my Achilles, it tore the bone off my heal rather than tearing. It took me over a year after surgery & physical therapy before I was back to about 80%. I'm now at about 90% & live with chronic pain every day. It doesn't hold me back that much but driving like I do for hours on end takes its toll.

On the bright side I developed ninja like balance on my left leg by the time I could use it fully again.

Yep. Three years and counting for me. Still not the same.

I screwed my right ankle 25 years ago, never been the same. Much weaker rolls easily.  Still aches some mornings.

IMHO the older you are, the longer it takes. I'm 63 and stepped into a pothole at night. Really twisted and sprained my ankle May 1. I iced it an hour later because I was lazy and sort of not listening to my wife. Well it's fours months later and it's still not 100%.
Bottom line is ice it immediately and wrap if possible. That will cut down on recovery.
Good luck.

I sprained mine really badly about 4 years ago...

It's prone to reinjury. Never has been quite the same since. If I twist it wrong, I can expect it to be wrong for months and months afterwards.

It has prompted me to seek out and invest in good footwear that actually compensates for my particular pronation. That's made the difference between walking 5 miles and feeling pain and walking 10 miles a day for days and not feeling pain.

You probably could have used surgery. They put a screw in through my ankle bone & I had it casted for about 6months total.

I feel your pain bro.

Probably. At the time I was so broke we had to jerk off the dog to feed the cat, so surgery was completely out of the question. The thing was swollen for like 2+ weeks despite RICEing the hell out of it...
(This was during the same time when my wife got a case of jungle foot from working long shifts and we treated it with OTC meds to avoid a dr. bill.)

To this day, if I walk around a lot with bad footwear I get unbelievable pain that originates in the middle of my foot and shoots all the way up to the middle of my back. (Think... the kind of pain that makes you want to take about a thousand Mg of IbProfin and chase it with a handle of vodka to maybe... MAYBE take the edge off.... and I am far from a wimp when it comes to dealing with pain)

To the OP... take care of your body. If you're practicing good RICE procedures and still getting poor results, consider going to a doc to see if there's more than meets the eye to the injury.

A high ankle sprain can take a few months.

I sprained my ankle pretty badly last year walking down
some uneven dirt , i had a low ankle sprain the whole side of my
foot was black and blue , it took over two months for the swelling
to completely go away and it was still sore for four to five months after
i do construction for a living so the foot didn't get much rest .

I sprained mine on July 4th.   I just noticed the other day that it had finally stopped hurting.  It was what I'd consider a mild sprain.

I sprained mine so bad the swelling went up past mid-calf (yes, even with ice and elevation).
When I finally went to the doctor a week later, they told me it would have been better if I'd broken it instead. It took 6 months to really start feeling "better" and 8 months before I thought it was feeling closer to "normal"...over a year before I could really say it was healed.

A sprain tears a ligament off the bone.
Some actually never reattach correctly.
Even with surgery.

A 'strain' just stretches or slightly tears a ligament.
They have a better chance of healing.
There may be calcification that reduces flexibility.

'Tincture of time' is often the best treatment.

I've got a word for you...proprioceptors.  Learn about them and how they affect a healing ankle.  I train a lot of athletes, a good trainer/therapist will work your proprioceptors.  My son had a grade 3 high ankle sprain a little over two weeks ago, he started at running back two days ago.  He would still be healing if I had followed the advice most doctors will give you.  A sports specialist will know who to send you to.  You can IM if you want some training tips so the ankle doesn't continue to fail due to outdated healing methods.

It may or may not help, but try putting some DMSO on it. I have seen a number of cases basically like the following. A woman I know fell down the stairs and sprained her ankle. It began to visibly swell immediately. We got the DMSO and put it all over her ankle with a cotton swab. All we had to do was get the skin wet. Then she laid down on the couch with her ankle raised.

Within thirty minutes she was walking normally, and that night she went bowling.

No shit, I have seen a number of similar happenings, including at least three sprained ankles. You can get it at mom-and-pop health food and vitamin stores (not the chains) or you can order it online at dmso.com  It is very cheap and not much is required so even a small bottle will last you for years.

It is also good for almost any kind of traumatic injury. A friend came over once two days after he had surgery on his shoulder. When he arrived, he could barely move his arm. We put some DMSO on his shoulder (not the incision, but all around it). Within one hour he could raise his arm over his head without pain. The pain never returned.

DMSO is a vasodilator. If you put it on the skin, it is absorbed directly through the skin and it opens up the blood vessels in that area and lets the body heal itself. I have had people tell me that they put it on an injury and an hour later were wondering if they had imagined the injury. Also good for bruises, whiplash injuries, arthritis, and tired feet. If you put it on a paper cut, the cut will be all but gone within an hour.

The most dramatic case I saw was a guy I worked with who went on a ski trip. When he got off the ski lift it hit him in the elbow and caused a massive bruise that turned his whole arm black. He went to the doctor and the doctor told him to wait three weeks and it would go away. We went out and got some DMSO and put it on one part of his arm to test it. He came back an hour later and it looked like someone had laid masking tape on his arm to create the bruise. The place where we had put the DMSO was completely normal and the other part was still black. You could see exactly where we had laid the cotton swab. He went home that night, put some on the rest of his arm and, by the following morning, the only bruise left was a one-inch square on his wrist.

It is very safe stuff and used routinely by veterinarians, sports teams, and in laboratories. It may or may not help your particular case, but it is very cheap and won't hurt. You may hear it referred to as "horse liniment". I buy it in a local livestock feed store. It may cause a burning sensation on your skin like a sunburn for a while. This is because the blood is flowing to the area. This will be gone within an hour.

Make sure that your skin is clean before you apply it, because it will take any chemicals on your skin right through the skin with it. In fact, some people with arthritis mix it with aspirin and then apply the aspirin and DMSO mixture directly to their joints.

The drawbacks are:
1) a sensation like a sunburn for about an hour when it is applied.
2) a garlic taste in your mouth. That's how they discovered it. A researcher noticed that the chemical was unusual because it caused a taste in his mouth when he got it on his fingers.
3) If you use a lot (much more than you need for an ankle), it will cause a garlic odor to your body that won't wash off because it is inside you. But you have to use a lot to do that.

Relevant to my interest.

Sprained my ankle on Friday. I'm doing better than I expected 2 days later, but I basically sat down and didn't move from the recliner for those 2 days. Now I'm walking more normally, but still no where close to being 100%. I thought this one was worse than the one I did 10 years ago in college. However, I didn't go to the DR for that one and I continued to walk on it after it happened. This one I went to the Dr (happened at work, had to) and got a brace and propped it up. I'm thinking the resting and not walking is making a huge difference.

RICE, the more you are able to do the faster it heals.

How long does it take?

The rest of your life! Welcome to the suck!

ever tried micro dosing test and shooting stem cells to get it to heal faster?

By my calculations, you have 63 more days.

Try DMSO. I have seen them gone in thirty minutes.

In my experience, the general rule of thumb for any joint sprain is 6 weeks.  You still have 2 1/2 weeks of healing to go.



I'd take it easy for a couple of more weeks and then see how it does.

If you're 20, about 45 minutes.

If you're 40, about six months.

 Read some more on the dangers of DMSO.  The drawbacks are significant.

This thread is depressing. I sprained my ankle 2 and a weeks ago and it's not back to normal. I can walk on it, I can work, but there's always a nagging light pain

I have known a number of people using it regularly for more than forty years, with no apparent ill effects. My own doctor is a body builder who uses it. Such as?

ETA: Out of curiosity, I Googled "dangers of DMSO". The dangers listed include the same ones I listed -- don't do it after you have been spraying for bugs because it will take chemicals through the skin, expect a feeling like a sunburn, and maybe garlic breath for a while. That's it. The only "danger" that lasts longer than an hour or so is the potential garlic breath. Otherwise, quite safe.