Muscle injury is pretty common among many people. You can face these muscle injuries especially if you do excessive walking, jogging, or even workouts. So, if you also face issues with muscle strains, soreness, or injuries, then this article is a must read for you.
There are many possible ways you can recover from muscle injury fast. For instance, if your muscle soreness or injury is moderate then there are chances your doctor might recommend you to take light therapy sessions for better and faster recovery rate. Moreover, you can also take cold therapies like ice packs and cold water baths to ease the pain.
In this blog post, you’ll know about some of the most effective ways to recover your muscle injuries fast. There has also been no reported side effects with these methods of pain recovery and they are applicable for any sort of muscle injury.
The Best Ways to Recover from Muscle Injuries Fast
People get muscle strains when tendons or muscles tear or stretch, which means that they hurt. People who fall, get hit in the face, or use their muscles too much can hurt them.
When something strains or injures the muscle, it hurts and takes a considerable amount of time to recover. Muscle injuries can take place due to many reasons but knowing the right way to treat this swelling and pain could help speed your recovery and make you feel better.
Below are the most effective ways to recover from muscle injuries fast.
1. Compression
Putting pressure and compression on your body can also help with muscle strains and pain. When you use compression, you can cut down on inflammation and swelling, which can cause pain and slow healing.
Moreover, you can also use compression with an elastic bandage to put a steady amount of pressure and keep the swelling from getting worse. Active compression that makes a pumping sound may also help your body get rid of extra fluid in the injured area and increase the flow of blood, which aids tissue healing and repair.
2. Heat Therapy
After the swelling of your muscles has gone down, heat therapy might help you to relieve pain. You can use therapeutic heat with these:
- Electric hot pads.
- Hot tubs or warm baths can also be a great option.
- Hot water bottles.
These heat therapies can also increase the blood flow, which can help you heal faster. Moreover, to lessen the swelling and pain due to muscle strain, you can also switch between hot and cold therapies at least once each day for faster and effective pain relief.
3. Light Therapy
There are devices like lamps and advanced gadgets that can make the skin get red light. Your cells get powered by red light through the mitochondria, this is where energy is made for your cells. This way you can speed up muscle recovery.
A chemical reaction takes place in the mitochondria when you undergo red light therapy. This helps the cells make more energy and grow new cells.
Your mitochondria makes ATP, which is the energy-carrying molecule for all of the body’s cells. Red light therapy makes your mitochondria better at making ATP. This is what helps to make recovery of your muscle injury and pain.
There is a lot of heat and light in red light therapy, but it doesn’t hurt your skin. It’s not the same kind of light, and it doesn’t harm your skin with harmful UV rays. As a result, red light therapy stimulates the growth of new skin cells and goes right to the source of the problem. It doesn’t harm the cells in your skin or your body.
However, we always recommend that you always consult your doctor first before going through any of these therapies.
4. Medications
Muscle strains can be very painful, and if you hurt a major muscle, it may be hard for you to do normal things. You can take medicines NSAIDs or aspirin to help with swelling and pain. For more severe muscle injuries, your doctor may even give you a short dose of a stronger pain reliever to help.
However, make sure that you do not do anything that might hurt your muscles again, even if pain medicine helps. For instance, if you strain your ankles it’s always recommended for you to stay away from sports or exercises for a few weeks, even if you don’t feel pain. Never put pressure on your injured muscles.
5. Massage
To get a therapeutic massage, you need to loosen your muscles and get more blood flow to your body. Applying slight pressure to your injured muscle tissue can help get rid of extra fluid and waste products.
According to a study, it has been found that massage right after an injury may even speed up the healing process. If the area is too sensitive to be massaged, wait for a week and ask the doctor about the best way to treat it.
Why you should seriously consider light therapy as your first line of treatment
To put it simply, among all of the solutions listed above, light therapy can be the most effective way to recover from any type of muscle injury. On top of that, light therapy is good for a lot of other things as well and it has almost no side effects.
As we have mentioned above, light therapy is able to amp up the cells of the body through some processes that involve the mitochondria. This is the part of the body that is responsible for providing energy to the cells. Once again, as mentioned above, this can really help boost the recovery process.
You can see how this can be really useful when it comes to muscle recovery. There is one other thing that is often left out of conversations like this. It is the fact that our sleep patterns have a lot to do with how fast our muscles are able to recover from any sort of injury.
It is important to understand that sleep is the main time when our muscles are able to recover. During this time, the broken fibers and tissues of the injured muscles are repaired. Therefore, it should be fairly obvious that better sleep will lead to better recovery and also, faster recovery.
So, how can light therapy help us with our sleeping issues? The answer lies in its ability to influence the circadian rhythm of the affected person. Light therapy has been strongly linked to better sleep because of its ability to keep a person’s circadian rhythm in check.
The circadian rhythm is responsible for telling our bodies when to relax and go to sleep and when to be alert. Oftentimes, we will find that the people who are having issues with their circadian rhythm are the ones who are not getting enough sunshine and Vitamin D, consequently.
Light therapy can easily address this problem. If for some reason, you are not able to get your daily dose of sunshine, then light therapy can help you mitigate that lost exposure to sunshine. Most light therapy devices are able to emit lights that are of 10,000 lux units in terms of strength. While this is not a direct replacement for sunshine, you will at least be able to get some of what you need in terms of daily exposure to bright light.
This can be especially useful for people living in places where sunlight is not abundant. There are places where there is literally no sunshine for months at a time. This can lead to a lot of people being unable to get the required amount of sunshine. This can then, consequently, lead to problems with the circadian rhythm of the person which can further deteriorate the issues they face with sleep.
In a nutshell, light therapy does a lot more than just helping you recover from muscle injury fast. It also helps you deal with your sleep problems. This is common among people who regularly suffer from muscle injuries. This is why light therapy is considered to be one of the best treatment options for muscle recovery.
If you are serious about getting light therapy, then you ought to consult with a doctor first. They can help you navigate the purchasing process (this can be confusing for a lot of people) and also make sure that you get the device that is best suited for your particular needs.
Bottom Line
Anyone can suffer from muscle injury and pain. However, taking the right kind of therapies would indeed give you a lot of muscle pain relief. Light therapy can be one of the best options to recover from muscle pain. Although, you need to be consistent with these therapy sessions to see effective results.
We recommend that you seek the assistance of a doctor first before you can go through these light therapy sessions.
