Chronic Muscle Pain
Regular exercisers should expect their muscles to feel
sore on the day after they exercise intensely, but if the soreness
doesn't go away, they need a medical evaluation. When you
exercise vigorously, your muscles are injured. Muscle biopsies
taken on the day after intense exercise show bleeding into the
muscle fibers and disruption of the Z-bands that hold muscle
fiber filaments together as they slide by each other. The
soreness you feel should usually disappear within 48 hours, and
even with the most severe workouts, it should disappear within a
week or two.
If the soreness remains after a few weeks, you should
check with your doctor. You may have an infection anywhere in
your body, an autoimmune disease or other treatable condition.
Doctors may call your chronic muscle soreness fibromyalgia,
chronic fatigue syndrome or multiple chemical sensitivities.
These diagnoses are an admission by the physician that he
hasn't the foggiest idea of the cause. There are reports of people
with muscle pain and normal liver tests who are then found to
have hepatitis C, which can be effectively treated. If you have
urinary tract symptoms in addition to your muscle pain, you may
be infected with mycoplasma or other bacteria which can be
treated with antibiotics. You could have Lyme disease or some
type of reactive arthritis. Don't accept a diagnosis of chronic
fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia until you have a thorough
evaluation for a hidden infection or other treatable causes.
November 20, 2005
Checked 9/28/08