Muscle strains are very common in sports, yet anyone can be susceptible to a muscle strain. This is especially true if your muscles are overworked or fatigued.
Recognizing a strained muscle is important to the understanding of how to let the muscle heal and repair from the injury.
Our joints bear the burden of supporting and moving our body weight as we move, lift, and are active. It may be inevitable that as we age, play in the backyard, complete yard work, or any repetitive activity that our joints can become painful or irritated over time. But what does that mean?
Years of everyday use can stress the cartilage and tissue that protect the joints, leading to potential osteoarthritis or other bony inflammatory processes that make our joints and movement painful.
Learning ways to manage your joint pain so you can reduce the pain struggle and activity limitations will help reduce frustration and feeling limited while also keeping you as strong and mobile as long as possible.
Read these 8 tips to alleviate your joint pain.
The difference between a sprain and a strain is what structure is involved in the injury. A sprain is an injury to a ligament, which are the bands of tissue that connect two bones together.
A strain, on the other hand, involves an injury to a muscle and/or a tendon, which is a band of tissue that attaches a muscle to a bone.
Regardless of the structure injured, a strain, or sprain, proper management is the best way to get back to your normal activity and lifestyle. More severe strains and sprains may need additional time to heal and may benefit from physical therapy to help you regain strength, range of motion, and normal walking or mobility
Treatments for joint inflammation can include rest, medication, physical therapy, or even surgery if joint tissues need repair. The goals of joint inflammation treatment are to reduce and ease the inflammatory response within the joint involved, correct and control the inflammation to slow down the inflammatory process and improve joint mobility.
The foods we eat can also play a big role in inflammation. Eating a diet focused on food that will help ease the inflammation in your body, such as fruits and vegetables that are high in natural antioxidants can help.
Walking is one of the most underrated and accessible exercise activities we can do. It can be done indoors, outdoors, on a treadmill.
While walking is an easy exercise to begin, you will want to avoid common mistakes to avoid injury and unnecessary stress on joints.
Its time to learn the 5 Walking Mistakes that are Hurting You
Gardening in spring, yard cleanup after winter, or fall prepare just a couple of the reasons we are pulled outdoors to tend to our yards, flower, or vegetable gardens. Often joint aches, muscle strains, and the beginnings of chronic body pains also begin with this gardening. Spending more time outside in the yard, hedging, weeding, picking up sticks, mowing, and using our muscles and bodies in ways it is not accustomed to. This often leads to temporary muscle aches to overuse joint injuries, such as subacromial pain syndrome, patellar tendonitis, and hip bursitis.
Whether by car, train, airplane, or another form of transportation, it all takes planning, prepping, and readiness to make sure we have all we need to make sure the trip is smooth and as least stressful as possible. Of course, we pack the clothes we need, toiletries, and books for the trip, but what about what our bodies need? To make sure joint pain, muscle aches, and unnecessary body pains don’t limit us on our travels, a little extra planning is always helpful.
Ankle sprains are very common in athletes yet can happen easily to anyone. Walking off a curb or stepping awkwardly, slipping on the grass, or tripping on the sidewalk are all common causes of ankle sprains.
You’ve heard it before – ”use it or lose it” – that goes for muscle flexibility too. In order for your muscle length to improve, or even stay at its current length, you need to develop a consistent routine. You brush your teeth every day, it’s time you stretch every day too.
Incorrect stretching can lead to muscle strains which could be more detrimental than not stretching at all. Flexibility is easy to achieve when completed regularly. Do your muscles, joints, and really your whole body a favor and start a stretching routine today.
I hear it every day in the clinic and it always makes me chuckle. But I’m here to let you know – you don’t have a rotary cup. We have a rotator cuff and it’s pretty important.
Even if a physical therapist determines your clinical presentation has the sign/symptoms of a rotator cuff tear or tendonopathy, that doesn’t mean surgery needs to be your end game. There are many exercises that will strengthen and help to correct the muscle imbalances that are found by the physical therapist.