Ligaments vs tendons (From Your Local Guardian)

Ligaments vs tendons

2:09pm Thursday 5th February 2009

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What's the difference between a ligament and a tendon?

Ligament runs from bone to bone and tendons run from muscle to bone.

Think about ligaments as holding two bones together at the joint - where they need to move.

The ligament allows enough movement but not too much. If there were no ligaments then the joint would fall apart or dislocate.

If the ligament is too tight then the joint can't move so it has to be just right.

The ligament is made from tough fibrous tissue so that it can resist tension and protect the joint but if the fibres are stretched beyond their limit, the ligament can rupture or sprain.

This is what happens for instance if you go over on your ankle, the fibres in the ligament are overstretched and a sprain results, the severity of the strain is graded from 1 -3, mild to a complete rupture.

Tendons are also made of tough fibrous tissue, but unlike ligaments they have a bit more spring in them due to the elastin component.

Think of your Achilles, that's a tendon - running from your calf muscle down to attach onto your heel bone. Look at the back of your hand and splay your fingers, those stringy things are the tendons running down from the muscles in your forearm controlling your hand.

Sometimes a tendon gets overworked and it can become inflammed, this is called tendinosis. The tendons around the wrist are vulnerable to this sort of problem and of course everyone's heard of tennis elbow - this classically involves inflammation of the tendon, running from the forearm extensors to attach to the bone at the elbow.