An ACL injury is one of the worst things that can happen to active people (and in general), but the more you know about this condition, how to spot if you’re at risk for it or perhaps have experienced it, the more the chances are that you can take the right action to fix it.
Today we will be discussing everything about ACL’s and what are the most ACL injury symptoms to watch for should you experience this kind of injury. We will also cover how to diagnose it and treat the injured leg area, including a natural pain and swelling management option as opposed to opioids.
What is an ACL?
The proper name for an ACL is the “anterior cruciate ligament”. It is one of the main ligaments that stabilize the knee and keep everything where it should be. It connects your shin bone to your thigh bone. It’s sort like glue that keeps parts together, this is what this technically is.
It is also one of the most common parts of the body where you can have injuries in today’s world, especially if you play sports like football, basketball and any other sport involving sharp changes of direction and running and high impact training that affects the knees.
If you’re a football fan for instance, you may be familiar with this type of injury if you are a fan of Football as it is a common injury that running line backs face daily. Let’s take a look at the different levels and types of injuries and what to do about them!
ACL injuries
Injury to this ligament is also called an anterior cruciate ligament injury, and this kind of injury can be quite painful and render a person without the ability to walk as the knee can have zero support in a complete tear of the ACL, but there are other less substantial injury levels that can happen to the knee and the knee area.
You can acquire a strain, tear it and even severe it completely and depending upon what level of injury you have will depend on how you will treat it and what kind of rehabilitation you will need to go through from the injury.
The level of rehabilitation and even the choice of surgery will depend on several factors including your age, whether or not you are into sports and activity level!
Many times a person will hear a pop when the injury occurs and this is usually a bad sign of a major tear happening which will require surgery and extensive rehabilitation.
Another factor in major tears is damage to other parts of the knee and other ligaments that are in the area of the tear. Some ways you can strengthen these parts of the knee is to take the following supplements. While it won’t prevent an injury, it can help improve the resilience of the ligaments and tissues around the knee.
Diagnoses
First is the Grade 3 Injury – A Torn ACL…
Let’s start with the worst case scenario, a torn ligament or Grade 3 knee injury. Immediate swelling of the knee area will occur on a tear as they tend to bleed profusely and acute pain will also be present.
The loss of the ability to bend the leg to 90 degrees or completely straighten out the leg or even move the leg at all are also signs of severe damage.
If you hear a pop at the time of injury or the knee will not support the weight of walking or the knee buckles back inward it is highly recommended to go get a doctors opinion on the injury as soon as possible!
If you do not hear a pop you could still have a torn ligament so if all the other symptoms are present without the pop it is still wise to get to the doctor quickly!
Keep in mind because there are no nerve endings in a ligament so there will be no pain from a damaged ACL, the pain comes from other areas of the leg affected by the damage so immediate pain does not always present itself until the actual swelling sets in.
In this above situations, it is best to just get an MRI and or x-rays to find out how severe the injury is and in most cases of a tear, surgery will be recommended but not always.
A torn ACL can sometimes heal on its own depending on the severity of the injury and the doctor will be able to inform you of more details after a thorough examination. Get several opinions in this case as some doctors may rush to suggest surgery while others will say it’s not necessary.
But in any case, this type of injury will require serious rehabilitation time!
Grade 2 Injury – Strained Or Partial tear…
A less severe injury than the Grade 3 is what is called a Grade 2 knee injury, or a partial tear of the ligament.
This can either be a stretched ligament to the point of being loose or even a partial tear. The recovery time for a partial tear or a stretched ligament that does not require surgery is about 6 weeks.
In most cases not involving athletes, this can be treated with rehabilitation consisting of exercises and a good management of pain and swelling.
Grade 1 Knee Injury – A strained knee…
A Grade 1 knee sprain is just that, a sprained knee.
This type of injury usually takes several weeks to heal with full strength happening around the six-week area.
Grade one injuries can be treated at home by…
- Resting of the joint.
- Reducing swelling
- Pain management
- Elevating the injured knee.
- Taking the same supplements we recommend here.
As with the injuries above, rehabilitation time will consist of exercises and keeping both the pain and swelling down to a minimum.
Natural Treatments
During rehabilitation time it is required to be taking some form of anti-inflammatories and pain relievers to control both swelling and for pain management.
Due to the overwhelming amount of people becoming addicted to opiates many people are going the natural way with this management, especially with the grade 2 and grade 3 injuries.
There are many different products for natural treatments and considering none of them are addicting and they do work we recommend exploring this kind of treatment.
Anytime we can use something natural instead of using narcotics this is a great thing!
We cover all of the natural products we recommend and are most commonly used to deal with this type of pain and swelling management in our article on knee pain and you can check that article out by clicking here!
Summary
We hope this information helps you in your quest to learn about ACL injuries and the treatment methods used in dealing with these injuries.
Injury to the knee and the knee area is always a challenging experience and we hope our information will help in the recovery time and treatment of any injury you may experience.