How To Relieve Aching Muscles

One of the many miseries that can accompany a whacked-out thyroid–or any member of the endocrine system, for that matter–is muscle pain.

Your muscles knot up. They lose flexibility. You creak like you’re 102. And through it all, you ache.

One thing for sure, you don’t want to learn to live like that the rest of your days. Holding on to pain comes under the heading of truly bad ideas.

So, what to do?

If you know a good physical therapist, or a good chiropractor or even somebody who gives a good massage, make an appointment. But notice I qualified each of them with ‘good.’ Average to poor practitioners can make things a mess of things. You could end up worse, not better.

If getting help isn’t possible–or in between visits even if it is–here are three things to help you help yourself.

First, consider applying ice packs–or bags of frozen vegetables. Put one towel-thickness, plus clothing, between you and the ice and spend twenty minutes, twice a day, with it.

Ice doesn’t feel good, though, so people usually apply heat instead. Heat feels great, but it’s almost always murder on muscle knots.

Here’s how you tell: An hour after cozying up with an ice pack, you feel better. An hour after heat, though, Hoo Boy, you hurt.

Another big-time help is a massager. I have a Homedics percussive massager. At full strength, it can beat the tar out of my muscles, in a feel-good-pain kind of way. If I have an injury, I back off to the old-style massager that looks like a bagel lying on top of a fat stick.

If a massager causes feel-bad pain, don't use it. At least not right away. Your muscles are too far gone to benefit. Use the other suggestions in this article, get your muscles in better condition, then go at it.

Starting at the top of my spine, I let the massager pound in place for a count of twenty, move it down an inch or so and give it another count of twenty–and so on.

You’ll know it’s working when you start itching. If the massager doesn’t make you itch, you probably don’t need it. But before you give up, try leaving it in place for a count of, say, thirty. Really tight muscles may need more encouragement at first.

And exactly why do you want to itch? Massaging knotted muscles restores their blood flow. To celebrate this pain-relieving accomplishment, the newly released trigger points itch like crazy.

Finally, fortifying your body with good vitamins and minerals keeps pain away, too. For one instance, magnesium prevents muscle cramps–and almost all of us are magnesium-deficient.

Here’s the happy ending: Once you get things get under a bit of control, it takes little regular attention to keep things moving in the right direction.