Free Ways to Manage Pain

Reader's Digest

Pushing your limits in the gym leads to solid gains, but it can sometimes, unfortunately, lead to pulls, strains, and other injuries. When you feel any type of pain in your muscles, tendons, or ligaments, it’s time to put down the weights and heal your body.

Here are the best natural ways to relieve your aches.

Stretching:

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Flexibility is the golden ticket to managing pain. “Athletic men and weekend warriors in particular deal with injuries such as shoulder or back issues and tendonitis,” says Graves. “As they age, their muscles heal up tighter, so they are always pulling or aching and that’s where flexibility and stretching come in.” To combat this type of pain, incorporate some variety of stretching into your routine. This can be in the form of anything from deep tissue massage to yoga.

Kinesiology tape:

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If you want to manage discomfort while staying active, you may want to consider taping up your pain points. “When you put it over muscles, it creates a slight friction on the skin, which helps the lymph nodes drain more efficiently, giving the muscles better circulation,” says Graves. It can also be placed over strained joints and tendons to act as a mild brace. Generally, the tape helps increase circulation and muscle relaxation.

Foam rolling:

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There is a method to the foam-rolling madness that you see at the gym. Pain can come from adhesions, scar tissue, or repetitive use, and the body has to heal this with collagen. Bantock says the foam roller helps to smooth out and realign most of the fibers in the damaged tissue and promote collagen growth.

Visit a chiropractor:

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If you are dealing with sharp or chronic nagging pain, it may be best to pay a visit to a chiropractor to check things out before you go crazy with yoga and foam rollers. “There are a lot of different referral pain patterns, and chiropractors are trained at the musculoskeletal care and another clinical diagnosis,” says Chris Bantock, D.C. “This means they can figure out how things should be treated from the least invasive to the most invasive way.”

Ice baths:

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Dipping into some ice-cold water can be part of your pill-free treatment. An ice bath acutely calms down inflammation in joints and muscles. It works by constricting blood vessels, which pushes the blood to your core, and then that blood returns to your muscles when you get out and move around. “The coldness pumps all of the toxins out of your muscles, and then, as you warm up, you can deliver more oxygenated blood and nutrients back into those muscles,” says Graves. “The quicker you can get nutrients back in, the less soreness you’re going to have.”

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