What is myalgia?
Myalgia – pain in the muscle area, resulting from hypertonicity of muscle cells, both at rest and under tension. Almost every person regularly encounters muscle pain in everyday life. Recently, not only adults, but even adolescents are prone to myalgia, which appears as a result of excessive physical exertion, stressful situations and injuries. There are three types of myalgia: fibromyalgia, myositis, and polymyositis.
Causes of myalgia
As mentioned above, the causes of myalgia can be stress, emotional overstrain, prolonged or too heavy physical exertion, as well as injuries, a sedentary lifestyle, infectious, inflammatory, chronic diseases, and so on. These factors lead to the development of hypertonicity (excessive muscle tension), which in turn changes the metabolic processes in the body. If myalgia is not treated for a long time, it can provoke the development of more serious diseases: polymyositis, osteoartosis, osteochondrosis, herniated discs, etc.
Myalgia symptoms
Symptoms of myalgia depend on the type of this disease.
The most common type of myalgia is fibromyalgia. It is characterized by the occurrence of pain in the muscles, ligaments and tendons. Most often, the pain is localized in the lumbar, cervical, occipital and shoulder regions.
Fibromyalgia, in turn, is also divided into two types: primary and secondary fibromyalgia.
The first case is characterized by musculoskeletal pain, which is acute on palpation. Fibromyalgia is often accompanied by asthenia and sleep disturbances. Primary fibromyalgia occurs predominantly in women and girls prone to anxiety, stress and depression, and it is often observed in adolescent girls. The pain may be aggravated by overload, injury, weather changes (cold, dampness).
Secondary (local) fibromyalgia is most often characteristic of men and can be caused by work or sports overload.
Myositis is the second most common type of myalgia. It is an inflammation of muscle tissue and occurs as a complication of various diseases, including the flu. Myositis can also be caused by injury or excessive physical activity. Sometimes myositis has a vascular origin, for example, insufficient blood supply to muscle tissue. Pain in myositis is aching, localized in the muscles of the arms, legs, torso, occurs and intensifies with movement.
Polymyositis is a disease, the first symptom of which is myalgia. It provokes muscle weakness and severe pain in the neck muscles and muscles of the shoulder girdle, which over time pass to the pelvic girdle and leg muscles. In some cases, polymyositis can lead to muscular dystrophy.
In addition to pain, a person suffering from myalgia may feel nausea, headache; the permeability of cell membranes is disturbed, hyperthermia and joint tension occur.
A separate type of myalgia is epidemic myalgia (Bornholm’s disease). It develops when the Coxsackie virus enters the body, and its symptoms are acute, paroxysmal pain, high fever, chills and vomiting. The pain is mainly localized in the chest, back, neck, arms. Most often, epidemic myalgia lasts from three to five days, less often – a week.
Treatment of myalgias
Treatment of myalgia, like any other disease, requires a doctor’s consultation. Therapy is symptomatic: first of all, it is necessary to identify and eliminate the causes that caused myalgia. Then relieve pain and inflammation of the muscles with the help of anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics. Among the most popular medicines used to treat myalgia are Diclofenac, Analgin, Pentalgin, Naproxen, Caffetin, Indomethacin. Effective is the use of warming anti-inflammatory gels and ointments (“Finalgon”, “Fastum Gel”), red pepper tincture, therapeutic solution (“Menovazin”).
Physiotherapy is also an additional treatment for myalgia. Patients are shown physiotherapy exercises and massages, taking dietary supplements.