Pulled muscle treatment
Pulled muscles (often referred to as a ‘strained muscle’) can occur for a variety of reasons. Usually when a muscle gets overstretched it will cause a small tear in the muscle. This is the basics to how lifting weights and building muscles works as it is a matter of tearing the muscle and letting it heal itself to ultimately grow bigger and stronger. However, a pulled muscle may not be caused from lifting weights but rather it is just due to overstretching a specific muscle, and essentially “pulling it”.
There are different severeness of pulled muscles and it can depend on how you pull the muscle and how bad it is pulled. Here are the three different severeness of a pulled muscle: The least severe condition would be that you only have minor discomfort. Usually you can still use your muscle but there will be a constant minor pain that can be annoying. There will probably be no need for using a pulled muscle treatment method for this severity level as the pain should go away naturally after a while. A more severe condition would be that the pulled muscle causes moderate discomfort. This could prevent you from doing strenuous tasks and can cause swelling or bruising as well. You may want to find a pulled muscle treatment technique to help minimize the pain but no severe treatment methods will have to be practiced. The most severe condition causes a serious injury which is extremely painful and takes quite a while to heal. Various side effects to this severity of a pulled muscle could occur such as muscle spasms, swelling, and severe bruising. As a result the pulled muscle treatment for a condition this severe could be much more serious.
Best Treatment Methods for a Pulled Muscle
The single best way to treat a pulled muscle is to get plenty of rest. This is where your muscle is recovering and healing itself. Just like with bodybuilding everyone will tell you that your muscles grow the most while you are sleeping and not actually while you are exercising them or relaxing. Just by getting plenty of rest and not abusing the sore muscle the pains should go away within one to five days. By then it should be back to normal and ready to be used at the intensity it was being used at before but you will want to try to avoid overstretching it again.
Using ice can also have positive results on how fast your pulled muscle gets back to a healthy state. By using an ice pack you can help decrease the amount of swelling, bruising, bleeding, and pain that is a result of the pulled muscle. You should put an ice pack on the affected area as soon as it is pulled to decrease the effects it has on your body as much as possible. You can put the ice pack on your muscle regularly but never leave it on for more than fifteen minutes per use.
Another great way to help rehabilitate the muscle is to actually use it. You obviously do not want to overuse it as it would just cause major pain but you do want to condition it to be able to work properly again. This could be as simple as gentle stretching each day to help minimize any muscle strains from the muscle not being flexed or moved for extended periods of time. If you just rest and do not use the muscle at all it could easily cause muscle spasms from begin immobile.
You can also go back to using the muscle again but you do not want to be overly abusive to it. If you pulled the muscle while working out then you will want to get back to the gym as quickly as possible. Start with lighter weights so the muscle can recondition itself and after a while it should be ready for higher intensity exercises again. By strengthening your muscles through weight lifting you also minimize the chance of the muscle being injured frequently.
There are other pulled muscle treatment methods available as well such as using prescription medication, in particular an anti-inflammatory should have decent results. However you probably do not want to have to deal with pulled muscles on a regular basis so avoiding them to begin with is the best way to go about it.
While it is not entirely possible to prevent pulled muscles from occurring you can definitely help lower the chance if you have a proper warm up routine. This means that you should be stretching your muscles every day and this goes for everyone, not just athletes or weight lifters. Use all the information you got here to help with your pulled muscle treatment and prevention and the results should show for themselves.
Comments are closed
Related Information
