Dr. Mona Khanna: Well, as the weather gets warmer, you and your children might be spending more time outside and that means, more injuries possibly.
So here is what you need to remember if you sprain an ankle, and knee or any part of your upper extremity, the word to remember is PRICE. It's very easy and it's stand for the following:
P is for Protect. You want to protect that area of your body, you want to isolate it if you can, because you want to give extra attention to that part of the body.
R stands for Rest. If you sprain your ankle when you are out there on the soccer field, don't keep playing soccer, get off the field, pays an attention to your injury so that it doesn't get worse and live you with something permanent. The next is I.
An I stands for Ice. So what you want to do is you want to make sure to cool that part of your body with some ice, with some cold water. Wrap the ice in a towel, hold it against that part of the body.
A very common way to do that is actually to use a bag of peas which are great because they're flexible. So slap a bag of peas onto that part of the body. What that does is it reduces the blood flow and decreases the amount of tissues that are injured. Then we have C.
C stands for Compression. What you want to do is, you want to use an A standard or some other kind of a bandage to wrap that part of the body, not too tightly, you don't want to cut off circulations, but you want to wrap it to help minimize the swelling. And last of all is E.
E stands for Elevation. So when you sprain that ankle, sit down on a chair, raise your leg up, put another chair across from you, make sure you do all the other things to that ankle but also let it rest on that other chair, so it's aligned with the rest of your body.
Why we do that is so the blood doesn't keep rushing down to that part of the body. We elevate it, so it doesn't get further injured.
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