Why Ligament Injuries Have Major Effects

I’m Going To Go Into A Little Bit Of Detail About Ligaments Today

Ligaments don’t have a direct blood supply or nerve connection like muscles have.

So with that, its ability to heal is going to be diminished as well.

Now the problem is that when we have an injury to the ligaments, we have three things that can happen.

It can be overstretched to where it’s just minorly injured.

That will heal at 100%.

Now we also have, then that’s called a sprain.

Now we have a grade two sprain, where we have partial tearing of the ligament.

It’s not completely torn apart, but there is tearing of the fibers that will never heal up to 100%.

Grade 3 is a complete tear that usually requires surgery and or rehab.

The problem is that ligaments are made of collagen and elastin.

After puberty, you can’t make more elastin however you do make more collagen.

That becomes scar tissue.

If you have scar tissue instead of elastin in a ligament it’s going to be less stretchy.

Imagine you’re going about your day and you lose the ability to stretch and bend your knee.

Now your body has to start compensating.

You move differently, and it puts pressure on other areas of your body.

When that lasts, then we start getting arthritis like osteoarthritis.

Because of that arthritis, you start compensating even more potentially injuring muscles.

You start hurting in places because you’re moving differently.

You didn’t hurt yourself.

And this is like a perpetual cycle.