Wondering if it's your joints or muscles aching? Read our guide to understand the causes of joint and muscle pain and learn the difference.

The Causes and symptoms of Joint and Muscle Pain

Muscle and joint pain belong to a larger category of common pain conditions affecting the muscles, connective tissue, and bones of a body, known as musculoskeletal pain

The musculoskeletal system includes all the physical structures of the human body that help support body weight and facilitate movement. This system includes the bones, muscles, ligaments, joints, tendons, and other connective tissues.

Because all these components are so connected and intertwined, joint pain can be mistaken for muscular pain, and vice versa.

This guide covers how to tell the difference between joint and muscle pain, and the common causes, symptoms, and treatments of muscle and joint pain

Joint Pain

Joint pain is pain or discomfort that affects the joints, which may include:

• • ligaments (strong fibrous tissue that connects two bones together)
• • cartilage (soft tissue cushioning between two bones that prevent grating)
• • tendons  

Some of the most common joints prone to joint pain are the knees, hips, and spinal joints

What Causes Joint Pain?

Joint pain can range from mild discomfort to agonizing pain. Some of the most common joint pain causes include injuries and normal wear and tear.

Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis that affects weight-bearing joints (knees, hips), as well as the hands.

The gradual wear and tear of joint cartilage increase the chances of bone rubbing or bone reshaping which can cause pain.

 Overuse injury

A contributor to chronic joint pain, overuse injuries cause repetitive stress and microtrauma to joints and components surrounding joints, which causes joint pain.

Bursitis is one example of this. It’s a condition caused by overuse of a particular joint. It results in painful swelling, irritation, and inflammation of a bursa, which is a fluid-filled sac located between bones in a joint. It tends to occur in the knees, shoulders, elbows, hips, and feet.

Risk Factors for Joint Pain

Risk factors that may contribute to joint pain include:

• • prior injury or injuries at a joint
• • excess weight (being overweight or obese)
• • increased age (daily wear and tear on joints)

Muscle Pain

Muscle pain describes pain affecting a muscle, a group of muscles, or tendons. Tendons are the connective tissues that attach muscle to bone.

The six major groups of skeletal muscles are:

• • back
• • arms
• • Legs
• • shoulders
• • chest
• • abdominal area

All of these muscle groups are prone to muscle pain due to injury, repetitive stress, or other reasons.

What Causes Muscle Pain?  

Common causes for muscle pain include acute soft-tissue injuries that tend to resolve with enough rest and treatment with at-home remedies. Below are common injuries that cause muscle pain.

Muscle strain

A muscle strain, also known as a pulled muscle, involves stretching a muscle beyond its normal ability. This causes tears in the muscle fibers, resulting in pain.

Impact injury resulting in bruising

Impact injuries to a muscle that result in bruising can cause pain and tenderness in the impact area. For example, getting kicked in the calf muscle can leave a painful and tender feeling, alongside bruising. It may last for a few days.

Muscle spasms

Muscle spasms are the sudden and involuntary tightening and contraction of a muscle. This can produce painful sensations. Muscle spasms may last from a  and may occur more than once.

Overuse injuries

Physical inactivity conditions the muscle into becoming immobile and weak. However, beyond directly impacting the weak muscle(s) itself, surrounding muscle groups have to overwork to compensate for the weak muscle. This can in turn lead to overuse injuries and muscle pain.

For example, weak abdominal muscles can cause the back muscles to work harder, in order to support upper body weight. Constant overuse of the back muscles can eventually lead to chronic back muscle pain and back muscle strain.

Risk Factors for Muscle Pain

The following may increase your risk of developing muscle pain:

• • tight hamstrings, and weak abdominal or back muscles
• • overexerting during a workout
• • working a job that is physically intensive

Essentially, situations where you are overusing a certain muscle or physically overexerting your body and muscles, may increase your risk of developing muscle pain. These factors can also increase your risk of the pain turning chronic (long-lasting).

How to Tell the Difference Between Joint and Muscle Pain

So, all that said, what is the actual difference between joint pain and muscle pain?

In terms of how the pain itself feels, the distinguishing factor between joint and muscle pain is the location of the pain within the affected area. Muscle pain can be felt deep within the flesh, and may affect one specific muscle or group, or be felt all over. Joint pain, however, is felt at the bone or immediately surrounding a joint.

We’ll take a closer look at the symptoms of these two types of pain below.

Symptoms of Joint and Muscle Pain

Here are some common symptoms you might experience with joint and muscle pain:

Joint Pain Symptoms

Joint pain in common weight-bearing joints, such as the knees, hips, and spinal joints, tends to be easier to identify because of where they are located.

Other symptoms you might experience with joint pain include:

• • swelling
• • inflammation
• • redness or warmth
• • creakiness or tendency to make noise when moving
• • difficulty bending or straightening the joint

Muscle Pain Symptoms

Muscle pain affects muscles and tendons, and can be felt deep within the flesh. You might feel:

• • dull aching
• • sharp pain
• • muscle spasms
• • muscle weakness
• • muscle stiffness or tension

More severe cases of muscle pain, such as in the case of delayed-onset muscle soreness, may reduce your range of motion.

Disclaimer:

This content is only for general awareness and not a replacement for medical advice.

Experiencing muscle soreness post exercise? Our guide covers tips and tricks for relieving muscle pain and how to look after your muscles while working out.

Muscle soreness tends to hit hard on the days immediately after a workout, and even more so, after a new workout routine. It can be really frustrating, and uncomfortable, so, what can you do to relieve that post-workout muscle pain?

The good news is that there are several options available to treat those sore muscles after exercise, from cold and heat therapy, to Epsom salt baths. There are also measures you can take to prime your muscles before, and even during physical activity, to ensure that the pesky, post-workout pain is kept to a minimum.

In this article, we cover why muscles get sore after exercise in the first place, some tips and tricks to prevent muscle pain and/or injury, and how to relieve muscle soreness fast following a workout

Why Do Muscles Get Sore After a Workout?

During an intense workout, microscopic tears can appear in your muscle fibers. The pain and sore feeling in your muscles following a workout is because of these tears, and inflammation around them.

Essentially, the stress you place on your muscles during exercise breaks down your muscle fibers, signalling your body to send help and repair the damage.

The process of muscle recovery involves the repair of these microscopic tears and the formation of new protein strands. As the tears are repaired, the new protein strands are stronger, which leads to ultimately bigger and stronger muscles. This is essentially the body adapting to newer, more intense physical workloads, to prevent such tears happening in the future.

How to Relieve Sore Muscles After a Workout

The process of muscle recovery involves the repair of these microscopic tears and the formation of new protein strands. As the tears are repaired, the new protein strands are stronger, which leads to ultimately bigger and stronger muscles. This is essentially the body adapting to newer, more intense physical workloads, to prevent such tears happening in the future.

However, severely sore muscles experienced after a workout could decrease your range of motion, and impact your ability to execute daily tasks. This is called delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

Here are a few tips and tricks on how to get rid of soreness after working out:

Cold or Heat Therapy

Cold therapy and heat therapy are both muscle pain relief treatments that can help with post-workout aches, soreness, and even injuries.

Cold therapy, like placing ice on the region of pain, is commonly used to numb or reduce pain and swelling. It does so by reducing the flow of blood to the site of injury.

Heat therapy, meanwhile, has the opposite effect. It increases the flow of blood to the muscle and relaxes them, helping you regain your range of motion.

Using both heat and cold therapy may be helpful in reducing overall pain or muscle soreness after a workout. Research confirms that using “cold immediately after exercise or 24 hours later was superior to heat in reducing pain.”

Epsom Salt Baths

Epsom salt baths are also an option to treat sore muscles.

The belief is that the Epsom salt, paired with heat therapy during an Epsom salt bath, may provide muscle relaxation, and may reduce pain from muscle soreness. Magnesium sulfate has been proven to reduce the need of intra- and postoperative analgesic requirements in patients undergoing surgery.

However, it’s important to check with your healthcare provider for more information.

Massage Therapy

A study on the effects of massage therapy on delayed-onset muscle soreness found that massage effectively reduced swelling and alleviated pain from DOMS by 30%. However, massage may not have a significant impact on muscle recovery strength.

How to care for your muscles before, during and after exercise.

Exercising safely, effectively, and correctly also involves taking the proper measures to care for your muscles before, during, and after your workout.

These measures can help prevent injury and avoid extreme muscle soreness due to delayed-onset muscle soreness.

Here are a few preventative measures to keep you relatively pain-free and on track with your workout routine:

• Warm up and warm down: Warming up increases blood flow and oxygen delivery to your muscles, which ultimately allows for greater endurance and performance during your workout. Warming down can gradually lower your heart rate back to baseline at a safe rate, as well as reduce muscle soreness and the risk of post-workout injury.

• Stay hydrated: During exercise, your body temperature increases, and your body sweats as a way to keep you cool. Staying hydrated during and after your workout replenishes the fluid that’s been lost through body temperature regulation. This eventually helps in restoring the equilibrium and can also help to prevent in recovery from muscle pain.

• Move the body: Sore muscles after a workout might put some people off being active. However, resting and not moving might “lock up” your muscles and make them feel stiff. Engaging in a low-impact post-activity such as light yoga, walking, or using a foam roller, can help combat symptoms of delayed-onset muscle soreness. Warming up and relaxing the muscles before a workout will also aid in sore muscle recovery.

• Replenish with food: Proper nutrition ensures that your muscles get the fuel and nourishment they need to recover from a workout. Incorporate healthy fats, healthy protein, and fiber in your post-workout meals. Eating foods high in potassium, like bananas, is also believed to aid in muscle soreness.

• Get enough sleep: Adequate sleep encourages protein synthesis (the body’s process of keeping cells functioning)and human growth hormone (hGH) secretion, both of which aid in muscle recovery and growth. To better care for your muscles before, during, and after your workout, ensure you get enough sleep, and practice good sleep hygiene.

Following these preventative measures listed above will ensure your post-workout pain is kept to a minimum but, remember not to push yourself too hard.

If you are concerned about any post-workout pain that doesn’t seem to improve with rest, speak to your healthcare provider to rule out more serious muscle injuries.

Disclaimer:
This content is only for general awareness and not a replacement for medical advice.
Moov Cool is a pain relief solution inspired by Cold Therapy and acts via a different mode of action.

A pulled muscle can be very sore. But it's also manageable at home. Read our guide to treating a pulled muscle and what can relieve the pain.

A pulled muscle, also known as a muscle strain, is a soft-tissue injury resulting from tears in your muscle fibers

Unlike the microscopic muscle fiber tears you sustain during a workout, a strained muscle generally involves a larger amount tears to these muscle fibers.
Pulled muscle pain can range from mild discomfort to severe pain that worsens with certain positions and movements. Mild cases can generally be treated with at-home treatments, while severe cases may require surgery.

Read on to learn more about what is a muscle strain is, what happens when you pull a muscle, and how to manage a pulled muscle.

What Causes Muscle Strains?

Overusing or overexerting your muscles, not warming up correctly, or using your muscles incorrectly (making an unusual movement), can all result in pulled muscles.

Forward head posture and slouching for prolonged periods places considerable stress on the neck muscles and the lower back muscles. Over time, the lower back muscles become overused and may develop a muscle strain injury.

Another common cause of muscle strain is improper use of your muscles, such as when lifting something heavy using an incorrect movement. Not stretching, or warming up correctly before exercise, can also lead to muscle strain.

Exerting your muscles when they are weak, fatigued, or tight may also increase your risk of sustaining a muscle strain injury.

Pulled Muscle Symptoms
The symptoms of a pulled muscle will present a little differently for everyone.
However, below are some of the more prevalent symptoms:

• A twinge of pain deep in the muscle: Tears in the muscle can feel like a sharp pain, located deep within the muscle.

• Limited range of motion: Depending on the severity and amount of muscle fiber tears, you may lose some muscle function, as well as your range of motion.

• Tension or discomfort: The symptoms of mildly pulled muscles may be easier to overlook. It might simply feel like there’s tension or discomfort in the general muscle area, but nothing that limits you too much.

• Bruising or swelling: Symptoms of moderate to severe muscle strain may involve visible bruising or swelling around the injury site.

• Pain: While some cases of muscle strain may simply feel uncomfortable, some people experience debilitating pain.

What Does a Pulled Muscle Feel Like?

Pain from a pulled muscle may feel uncomfortable, sore, or sharp. You can generally tell when you’ve pulled a muscle if the pain feels like it’s emitting from deep within the muscle, and worsens when you move.

For example, symptoms of a pulled muscle in the arm include pain when extending or contracting the arm. This may also affect your range of motion, depending on the severity of the pain.

How to Prevent a Pulled Muscle
After recovering from a pulled muscle, the goal is to avoid re-injury.

• Warm up and warm down: Exerting the muscles before they’ve been primed and prepped for physical activity risks a muscle strain injury. Make sure you stretch or do some gentle cardio, like jogging, before undertaking intense physical workouts or exercises. Warming down after exercise is just as important as warming up. If you don’t stretch before and after exercise, it can leave the muscles stiff and more prone to future injury.

• Use correct body mechanics: Lifting something heavy with poor body mechanics can cause a muscle strain, even for individuals who are relatively strong. The proper way to lift something heavy is to drive force from the legs and maintain the natural curve of the back, as opposed to stooping over. Stooping over, or leaning forward to pick something up, relies largely on the lower back muscles. Naturally, lifting things in this way risks muscle strain in the lower back.

• Strengthen and lengthen: Muscle strains tend to occur when the muscle is overstretched beyond its normal range of motion, or when the muscle is incapable of bearing the weight you exert on it. Practicing flexibility and strengthening the muscles can be a good way to help prevent re-injury. Yoga is a great way of doing this.

• Rest when fatigued: Overexerting the muscles (excess tearing) can lead to a pulled muscle as well. When you can feel that your muscles are fatigued, stop and rest. Don’t push yourself too hard.

Disclaimer:
This content is only for general awareness and not a replacement for medical advice.

Wondering whether heat or ice (or both) is best for your muscle pain? We've covered when and how to use hot and cold treatments for your sore muscles.

You've probably been told to apply ice to an injury after sustaining one. You've probably also heard that you should use heat, too.

Heat and ice are two commonly accessible pain relief treatments that you can do at home, but how do you know whether to use heat or ice on muscle pain?

In this guide, we cover the different pain relief properties of heat and ice, and when its best to use them for your muscle pain.

Should I Use Heat or Ice on Muscle Pain?

Whether to use heat or ice depends largely on the cause of your muscle pain.

Is your muscle pain due to an acute soft tissue injury for example a muscle strain, or muscle bruising? Was there trauma to the muscle, resulting in impact or penetration of the muscle? Or is the pain simply due to soreness after an intense workout?

These are the questions you want to be asking yourself when deciding whether heat or cold therapy is the course of treatment. Heat and ice provide pain relief for different types of muscle pain, however, depending on the cause of the pain, heat may be more effective than ice, and vice versa.

In these next sections, we outline when to use ice and when to use heat on muscle pain, and when a combination of the two could be your best option.

When to Use Heat

Heat therapy is also known as thermotherapy. It involves raising the temperature of the affected muscle to induce muscle relaxation and pain relief.

Different forms of heat therapy include:
• Reusable heat packs
• heating pads
• hot showers
• steam baths
• sauna (dry or wet heat)
• paraffin wax baths

During heat therapy, the temperature of the skin and soft tissues increases. This activates the body's various thermoreceptors, dilating blood vessels and activating pain receptors

Dilated blood vessels result in an increased blood flow, to the heated area. This helps flush out metabolic waste that is created as by-products of exercise, and supplies the injured or affected muscle with oxygenated blood and nutrients. This may support muscle recovery

Heat can be beneficial for muscle pain caused by:
• stiff muscles
• sore muscles (that are not swollen or inflamed)
• muscle spasms

If the muscle pain or injury is accompanied by any swelling or inflammation, it is best to avoid the use of heat until the swelling and inflammation subsides.

Moist heat may also be helpful in managing pain related to osteoarthritis. Older injuries that have extended pain symptoms can also benefit from heat therapy.

When to Use Ice
Ice is a form of cold therapy that involves exposure to colder temperatures in order to relieve pain. This includes using ice packs, doing ice massages, or submerging in an ice bath. Other forms of cold therapy include cold air exposure, such as whole-body cryotherapy

The application of ice lowers the skin's temperature at the area of application. This alerts the body's cold thermoreceptors to activate vasoconstriction activity. This is when the blood vessels constrict, becoming narrower, which helps to reduce blood flow to the skin, conserving body heat.

This vasoconstricting effect is particularly helpful in managing any inflammation and swelling that might occur after an injury. The narrowed blood vessels limit the flow of blood and other fluids to the injured area, minimizing swelling and inflammation surrounding the injury.

Ice application also impacts nerve conduction velocity, slowing the rate of nerve activity at the site. It can also slow the rate of pain signals firing in the brain. This may be why ice application seems to decrease one's perception of pain, increasing both pain threshold and pain tolerance

Ice may be beneficial in these scenarios:

• muscle strain or sprain
• swelling
• inflammation
• bruising
• inflammation in muscles surrounding a joint or tendon
• recent injuries (less than six weeks old)

Disclaimer:
This content is only for general awareness and not a replacement for medical advice.

Moov Cool is a pain relief solution inspired by Cold Therapy and acts via a different mode of action.

What is cold therapy and what are its benefits? We've done a deep dive on cold therapy to understand what it is, how it works and whether it's good for you

The underlying science behind cold therapy involves exposing the body, or a body part, to extremely cold temperatures, which may help relieve pain. This happens because the cold causes blood vessels to constrict, which reduces blood flow. This reduction in blood flow could theoretically reduce inflammation and pain around the site of an injury or strain.

In this guide, we cover some common cold therapy options, the various pain-relief benefits of cold therapy to help you determine whether cold therapy is right for you.

Different Types of Cold Therapy
There are many forms of cold therapy. Below are a few of the more common types of cold therapy available.

• • Cold Compress

A cold compress, or an ice pack, is an easy way to do cold therapy at home.
If you don’t have an ice pack, you can also use a bag of frozen peas or vegetables.

• • Cold Water Immersion

Cold water therapy includes different forms of cold-water immersion—cold plunges in a pool or lake, ice baths, or cold showers.

• • Localized Ice Massage

An ice massage involves massaging an ice cube (or using a cryocup) that is wrapped in a cloth or is covered directly on the site of pain.

The skin will feel extremely cold and then numb. Do not apply ice directly to the skin and do not continue an ice massage once you’ve reached a point of numbness.

The Benefits of Cold Therapy
Cold therapy has been gaining popularity thanks to its various health benefits, particularly for muscle pain relief.

If you have sore muscles, a muscle sprain, or lower back pain, you might find cold therapy helpful.

Below are three ways that cryotherapy can help you better manage your muscle injuries or pain.

• • Decreases Inflammation and Swelling

Cold exposure therapy like cryotherapy and ice application aims to reduce inflammation and swelling due to muscular injuries by constricting blood vessels and reducing blood flow. This will numb the injured area, reducing pain

• • Decreases Sensitivity to Pain

One of the major benefits of cold therapy is its role in pain management. Data from one study involving the cold application icing of the ankles of adult male sports players, suggests that cold therapy increases one’s pain threshold and pain tolerance by reducing nerve conduction velocity (NCV). This is the speed at which electrical impulse move through a nerve.

In other words, applying ice to an injury reduces the speed of nerve activity, and potentially the speed of pain signals firing in the body. This might be why our pain perception is lowered during cold therapy.

• • Relieves Sore Muscles

Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is extreme muscle soreness experienced in the hours, or even days, after an intense workout. DOMS can make it too painful to move the affected muscle, reducing your range of motion.

A meta-analysis of 32 randomized controlled trials found that using cold therapy application within one hour after exercising, can reduce the degree of pain caused by delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) within 24 hours.

Disclaimer:
This content is only for general awareness and not a replacement for medical advice.
Moov Cool is a pain relief solution inspired by Cold Therapy and acts via a different mode of action