After a hard workout or a hard day's work, you can be left with a nasty muscle ache. Although muscle pain is not something serious, it can be very annoying. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to reduce that annoying pain and recover faster. In this blog, we discuss everything you need to know about muscle pain and what you can do to reduce it. Read on quickly below.
What is muscle pain?
Muscle soreness occurs after intense exercise and gives a sensation of pain in the muscles. Microscopic damage occurs to the muscle fibres during exercise. When you put excessive or prolonged strain on the muscles, waste products, including lactic acid, build up. This causes soreness or causes cramping. Muscle pain can occur immediately, but often only rears its head after one or two days. The symptoms often disappear again within a week.
How does muscle soreness occur?
When you exercise intensively or perform new exercises, small tears can appear in your muscle fibres. Your body reacts to this with an inflammatory process, causing pain and stiffness in the strained muscles. As waste products accumulate during exercise, the painful, tense feeling occurs. During intensive exercise, your body produces more lactate (lactic acid) than it can eliminate and this accumulates in the muscles. This is how muscle pain occurs.
How can you reduce muscle pain?
Fortunately, there are several things you can do to reduce muscle pain. We give you some tips below:
- Rest sufficiently: This does not mean that you should stop moving altogether. It is important to keep moving in a gentle way when you have muscle pain. Think of yoga, swimming or walking.
- Nutrition: eat enough protein for muscle recovery. Proteins keep your muscles healthy and strong. They also offer muscles support to recover from overexertion. By eating and drinking protein-rich food, muscle pain can already be reduced considerably. You get protein from foods like meat, fish, cottage cheese, protein shakes and bars and eggs.
- Massage: if you suffer a lot from muscle pain, it can be very nice to have a nice massage. It is a pleasant way of loosening up your muscles and reduces the pain afterwards.
- Stretching: by stretching your muscles, you lengthen your muscles. This is not beneficial before exercising, but it is beneficial after. When you have muscle pain, it is nice to stretch the muscles again. However, do it slowly and not for too long.
- Medical taping: this is a method in which kinesiology tape is used to support muscles. Medical taping can be used for muscle injuries, inflammation, joint pain, fluid retention and hay fever.
- Watch your posture: muscle pain occurs when you have trained too fanatically during sports but also, for example, when you have lifted too heavy or when you adopt the wrong posture while working. It is therefore essential that you always adopt the right posture.
Need more information?
After reading this article, do you still have questions about how best to deal with muscle pain? Then don't hesitate to contact us! Our team consists of experienced professionals who can diligently answer all your questions. Our customer service team can be reached via email, live chat and telephone.
