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Tips For Treating A Sprain From Phoenix Mercury Athletic Trainer Tamara Poole

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Phoenix Mercury athletic trainer Tamara Poole offers tips for treating sprains.

Tamara:
Here at the Phoenix Mercury we have a lot of sprains that happen. Tangela, though, has been lucky. She doesn’t have sprains, well, any sprains right now.

But the most common sprain we see probably is ankle sprain and all sprains are really treated the same. So the most important thing is controlling the swelling, protecting the area and keeping it elevated.

So if you sprained your ankle, for instance, we want to ice it and then possibly put an Ace wrap or some kind of compression on it and we want to put it above your heart.

And when I tell people to put it above their heart they usually just put it up on the coffee table. Above your heart is above your heart, so you should be laying down and your foot above your heart.

So the first night, for instance, she’d want to sleep with it, somehow propped above your body because it’s harder for your heart to pump the blood to the injured area. So again, if we control the swelling in the area the faster we get back.

So let’s say this didn’t happen to you and it swelled up. You still go with the same protocol. You are just going to have a little slower recovery.

So here at the Phoenix Mercury when we take up any kind of sprain we are trying to give that joint the best possible fastest, speediest healing possibility.

In real life sometimes it doesn’t happen. You still have to go to work, you still have to do what you do.

So number one, I have already said it like eight times, she has to ice. Then you have to prop it up and there’s a couple of little sayings that we use, like RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation – that’s something really easily you can use in real life.

About Tamara:
A veteran of athletic training and sports medicine in women’s professional sports, Tamara Poole is the Phoenix Mercury’s Head Athletic Trainer. Just the second head trainer in Mercury history, Poole acts as a medical liaison with the team’s medical and organizational staff, focusing on injury prevention and management.

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