Muscle aches are one of the most well-known symptoms of anxiety and stress. It often seems that after a prolonged period of stress, the body tenses up and the muscles begin to develop uncomfortable symptoms.
These types of muscle aches are usually a minor inconvenience, but others find that they can become a tremendous problem, making them very uncomfortable and possibly leading to behavioral changes.
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Why do muscles hurt?
Anxiety exacerbates long-term stress and the release of adrenaline from your fight or flight system. These responses affect your muscles and the way your body interacts with them.
When you have anxiety, it causes many problems that lead to muscle tension:
As the adrenaline rushes through your body, blood vessels constrict. This prevents your muscles from getting the blood flow they need, which in turn causes stress that leads to tension and aches.
Your body also sends messages to your muscles to prepare to fight or flee. Later, when fight or flight does not occur, muscles become fatigued and stressed. This also creates tension.
Anxiety affects your hormones, which are chemical messengers your body uses to send signals to your muscles and nerves, as well as neurotransmitters that deliver a similar action directly from your brain. When these are out of balance as a result of anxiety, pain is possible.
Not all muscle pain comes directly from your body’s reactions to stress, either. Some of them come the way you respond to yourself when stressed. For example, many people with anxiety they end up slouching more, avoiding exercise or sleeping longer. In reality, all of these can lead to muscle aches and strains, simply because changes in behavior stretch and squeeze the muscles.
As you can see, there are many reasons anxiety causes muscle tension, and all that muscle tension can lead to muscle aches.
How to stop anxiety muscle aches
As soon as your muscles start to ache, treatment is no different than muscle aches caused by exercise or injury. These pains are simply your muscles’ way of rebuilding themselves and making sure they are in the best of health. So if you want, you can treat these pains using many of the same tactics that you would use to treat any of those pains, such as:
- hot shower
- over-the-counter pain relievers
- Extension
Stretching your muscles can be very effective in relieving some of the tension you feel, which in turn will lessen any aches and pains you experience. Some specific solutions for anxiety include:
Massage. It’s not clear exactly why massage also seems to help with anxiety, but it’s likely that the stress-relieving activity combined with the good feelings you get in your muscles after the massage is over has anxiety-reducing benefits.
Exercise. Exercise can create muscle soreness in some ways, but over time it will improve your muscles’ ability to respond to stress and should also decrease your anxiety. Exercise can be very effective in managing muscle tension.
Yoga. Yoga is, of course, a form of exercise. But many people find that yoga seems to have its own benefits for anxiety symptoms, especially muscle tension. Yoga can help improve movement of the muscles and stretch them to lessen future tension.
One of the most important things to keep in mind is that you need to make sure don’t let muscle aches get the best of you. Ideally, you should stay active, fight him, and do everything you can to make sure you’re still taking steps to control his anxiety.