This is a series on arm and hand pain causes. If you missed the beginning, go back to the Checklist. Damage cause by unaccustomed overuse is effectively treated with Neuromuscular Therapy in my Boston area treatment center.

A typical scenario for a person who suddenly has arm and hand pain is that a deadline comes due at work and you’re not ready! To meet the target date and keep your job, you work long hours under stress for a couple of weeks (unaccustomed overuse). Without warning, you are in pain! How did this happen!?  You didn’t feel it coming and now you’re in so much pain that you have to get help typing to finish in time. This is about an energy crisis and about aging.

Until about age 15 a person can do a lot physically without consequence because the “mother cells” or stem cells that can differentiate into any kind of cell needed for healing are still in active mode. At about that age, the number of stem cells available to create healing reduces because the body is coming toward the end of it’s cycle of growth. Rapid healing slows down as the body ages starting at about age 15. The next change comes around age 45 when the production of bicarbonates produced in the digestive tract to neutralize acids in the blood slows down. The effect is that there are more acids in the system that begin to cause oxidative stress (like rusting iron). Again, as the cells begin to be less efficient due to this process, the capacity of the body to heal quickly slows down.

So, the sad fact is, that as we get older, we can’t overload muscles with unaccustomed tasks without preparing the muscles for that work. They just can’t recover as quickly as they did when we were young. “Personal Training” is a field that addresses this fact. The muscles need to be trained and conditioned to do what we require of them. Even with conditioning, unaccustomed overload will very likely cause spasm and pain.

An energy crisis in the muscles is caused by using up the nutrients and oxygen needed to perform work faster than the body can provide them. The cells need fuel to burn to provide the energy needed to contract and relax the muscles as they move. The arm and hand muscles aren’t very big so they can’t store as much fuel as the large working muscles. Unaccustomed overuse can easily deplete the reserves and cause an energy crisis that basically shuts the muscles down until they get more fuel. If you’ve been running on empty for days, the damage can be serious like the engine on a car seizing up when it runs out of oil.

Refueling and repairing the damage means a program of stretching, icing and muscle treatments, increasing blood flow and providing the nutrients necessary for muscle health.