Muscle and tendon inflammation can occur easily without your awareness, and when an injury occurs, fairly long treatment time is required, possibly causing you to have to miss good opportunities in life, especially in athletes or sports enthusiasts. Therefore, the best solution is to avoid activities or behaviors that can lead to muscle and tendon inflammation in the first place.
What causes tendon and muscle inflammation?
Injury can be caused by both external forces and muscle contractions. Injuries caused by external forces include impacts experienced by a soccer player when an opponent uses their foot to forcefully stop the player’s thighs where thigh muscles are located, leading to bruising. When an impact causes bruising, various blood vessels tear and bleed into the muscle layers. In severe cases, there might also be muscle fiber tears and more extensive bleeding, leading to swelling in the first 48-72 hours.
As for muscle contractions, they can occur due to sudden contractions that cause tearing to the blood vessels of the muscle fibers. Possibly caused by overuse, examples include weight training by using excessively heavy weights or by training for too long until muscles and tendons become inflamed and overused.
3 Top Causes of Muscle and Tendon Inflammation in Athletes
- Lack of exercise preparation.
- Excessive exercise such as by lifting weights that are too heavy.
- Excessively exercising or playing the same sports or doing so too quickly such as when playing tennis (wrists and elbows), swimming (shoulders and arms) and golfing (arms, back and waist).
How to Prevent Muscle and Tendon Inflammation
Before exercising and playing any sport, warm up the body by exercising different parts of the body for at least 5-10 minutes and avoid exercising repetitively in the same positions and avoid suddenly changing positions such as by suddenly twisting or turning the body. Moreover, we do not recommend using any part of the body for too long or excessively. Exercise should be performed regularly but not heavily and intensely every once in a while.
How is tendon inflammation treated?
Normally, tendon inflammation is caused by physical overuse. So, resting the injured part will enable gradual self-recovery. Otherwise, pain relief might be achieved by applying a cloth dipped in warm water or medications that treat pain, swelling and inflammation. In cases where there is severe pain that does not improve within 2 weeks, consulting a doctor is appropriate. Some cases require x-ray for diagnosis, and treatment might conclude with physical therapy, medications and injections. In cases of torn ligaments, however, doctors will have to perform surgery to repair the damaged ligaments.
In addition to playing sports, muscle and tendon inflammation can happen to anyone if they engage in inappropriate behaviors, especially in health enthusiasts who regularly exercise and people who work intensely with significant movements to their joints and muscles and experience physical impacts. Otherwise, people might fall down the stairs, fall into potholes or trip over obstacles, suddenly lift objects or excessively and repeatedly lift objects, drive while leaning the body back or ducking down to pick up objects in a deep location or suffer due to being elderly or patients with chronic joint conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis, Reiter’s Syndrome, etc. Working age people who sit in front of computers for a long time and overweight people also experience inflammation in the muscles of their feet, the tendons adjacent to the soles of their feet and heels due to carrying excessive body weight, etc.