Muscle recovery and sleep are so important. It is essential for maintaining overall physical health and maximizing athletic performance. Unfortunately, muscle injury can happen to anybody at any time. It doesn’t matter if you are a world-class athlete or the only count taking the stairs as exercise. An injury can easily occur. If you are suffering from a muscle injury there are a few remedies to help speed up the recovery process. One often overlooked but crucial aspect of muscle recovery is sleep. During sleep, the body undergoes important physiological processes that facilitate muscle repair and growth.
What are minor muscle injuries?
A minor muscle injury usually consists of a muscle pull, strain, or tear. Occurring in the muscle fibres or tendons, it can damage small blood vessels. This causes local bleeding, bruising, and irritating pain to nerve endings in the damaged area.
Causes
Unfortunately, the causes of these injuries can easily occur during any form of physical task. For example sudden heavy lifting, exercise, or sports. The causes of minor muscle injury include anything from overreaching to suddenly changing direction or speed. As well as falling or landing awkwardly, or colliding with a person or object. Needless to say, none of these are pleasant and any shock to the body is at risk.
Symptoms
If your body does suffer a physical shock, symptoms of an injury include swelling, bruising, or redness. Also, pain when resting or moving the affected muscle or joint or weakness of the muscle or tendon. It can even cause the inability to use the muscle at all. Obviously the worse the pain, the more severe the injury. If the pain is unbearable you should see your doctor as soon as possible.
The importance of sleep
These injuries are usually easily treatable, especially with plenty of rest. Overreaching, lifting too much weight, or moving awkwardly would have caused the injury. Letting it relax and heal in its own time will help. Resting avoids further damage to the injured area and accelerates healing. This is why sleep and muscle recovery is so important. Sleep allows for the restoration of energy levels, replenishment of glycogen stores, and regulation of hormones crucial for muscle recovery, such as cortisol and testosterone. The reason sleep is so helpful during the recovery process comes down to growth hormones and blood flow.
Growth hormones
Growth hormone release peaks during deep sleep stages, stimulating tissue growth and repair, aiding cell reproduction and cell regeneration. Likewise, it regulates your body’s metabolism to literally repair you while you snooze.
While the body and brain are resting during sleep, energy consumption is lowered. As a result, more energy is used to restore bones and muscles through an increase in growth hormone production. Likewise, there is an increase in blood flow to the area in need. During deep sleep, around 40% of the usual blood flow to the brain is instead sent to the muscles to help restore energy. Furthermore, prolactin is released during deep sleep. Prolactin holds anti-inflammatory properties to help further recovery.
Therefore, adequate and quality sleep is paramount for athletes and anyone engaged in physical activity to optimize muscle recovery, enhance performance, and prevent injury.
Chiro & Sports Med
Our chiropractors at Chiro & Sports Med are committed to providing chiropractic solutions to address your unique needs, whether experiencing an irritated nerve, bulging disc, back pain, neck pain, knee pain, headaches, or even muscular tightness and tension. You may be searching for pain relief after an accident or experiencing an injury. Our mission is to help reduce or eliminate pain and to prevent future problems and injuries. Above all, we are here to improve your quality of life, well-being, and your ability to live an active healthy lifestyle.
If you would like to make an appointment with one of the chiropractors at Chiro & Sports Med call our office on 9817 2005 and one of our friendly staff will organise an appointment for you or you can Book Online.
