The Treatment of Shoveling and Slip and Fall Injuries (and Other Muscle Sprains/Strains)

It’s winter in upstate New York. With winter comes snow and ice. With the presence of snow and ice, the rate of injuries due to shoveling and slipping on ice and falling rises. Muscle strains can be debilitating, whether they are due to shoveling, falling or are life or sports-related, but in any case, proper treatment of an injury can help knock out injuries QUICKLY. No one wants to be in pain or have to slow down to nurse an injury. I mean, honestly… why be uncomfortable any longer than necessary?

Shoveling stresses muscles that many people don’t typically use and so it’s easy to get injured doing it if your body isn’t used to it. Slipping and falling tweaks muscles through the quick movements of twisting and torquing joints and muscles when you are trying to catch or brace yourself.

A couple of months ago, I pulled a back muscle LIFTING MY LEG to put my running pants on. I thought to myself (and very likely even said aloud), “You’re kidding me! All the crazy things I do, and I pull a muscle putting my pants on!!!” I panicked as burning pain spread through my the hip and wrapped down into my leg. I’ve treated this SO many times before in my own clinic; I know full well how debilitating and chronic low back strains can be. I worried. It hurt to walk, to bend, to lift my leg, and to get up from sitting… I went for a run anyways, because I am crazy like that. 2 miles. And I did quite a bit of walking. I knew I definitely tweaked my lower back.

Luckily for me, I know exactly how to deal with issues like these because it’s what I do for a living. I would have turned immediately to acupuncture, but it was a Friday and I had patients to treat, and my usual acupuncturist was not in the office. I went to see my chiropractor because she was able to get me in, and I knew she could do some muscle work to help get the healing ball rolling. I put my own Chinese herbal patches and liniments on, and did some exercise( yoga, running and stretching). I hobbled through the weekend and was able to get acupuncture early into the next week, which helped IMMENSELY. My pain was reduced by probably 75% before I even left the office. What little bit was left was eliminated by a massage appointment I luckily had scheduled for that Friday. In a week, I had almost completely knocked out a low back strain. No issues since!

So what can you do make sure an injury heals as quickly as possible?

First , let me quickly explain what happens when you “strain” or “tweak” a muscle, and why it causes pain. Looking at the image below, you can see that the main part of a muscle is attached to the bone by a tendon. You can also see that muscle bellies are made up of “bundles” of little muscle fibers. These muscle fibers contract and relax the muscle.

In a typical instance when muscles are “strained” or injured, one of two things could happen. 1. The muscle can be overstretched, either because the muscle is already tight and won’t fully extend or because the joint gets pushed past its normal range of motion (like in slips and falls), which causes the tendon to partially (and in more severe cases, fully) tear away from the bone, and/or 2. The muscle gets pushed too hard, fatigues and then “quits”. When muscles “quit”, all or part of the muscles “quits” in a contracted, spasmed state, not in a relaxed state! In either case, the injured muscle stops functioning properly, and pain occurs when tight muscles cannot stretch and/or compress nerves that run through the muscle bellies.

Here’s what you should do when you experience pain that you suspect may be a muscle strain:

Act immediately to treat the strain. Do not try to ignore it and say “ah, it will go away”, especially if it is debilitating. If it’s mild, you can maybe wait a day or two to see if it subsides. I wouldn’t go more than a week. The longer an injury hangs around, the longer it takes to treat.

Do NOT apply ice to your injuries.  The recommendation to apply ice to injuries is old and outdated, and evidence has shown that ice does not help injuries heal. In fact, ice SLOWS healing. Heat is typically better for muscle injuries. And topical creams and liniments can relieve pain and speed healing, depending on what the product is.

Do NOT use anti-inflammatories (ibuprofen, acetaminophen) as your primary treatment strategy. These actually slow healing, are harmful to your internal organs and don’t actually FIX what is broken. These drugs should be used sparingly.

Work on active recovery. Keep moving. There is NO evidence that “rest” is helpful. In fact, in the case of muscle strain, rest only helps to allow the muscle to tighten up even more. What you really need is to get blood flow into the muscles so they can loosen and heal. Exercise and stretching out the muscles are key.

Seek out healthcare providers that treat soft tissue injuries. There are MANY healthcare practitioners around who are trained in treating soft tissue injuries. Acupuncture is amazing and is, of course, the therapy I recommend first and foremost (because I’ve witnessed it do amazing work on injuries), but I also utilize chiropractic, massage and physical therapy. Just make sure you ask the practitioner if they treat the kind of pain you are seeking relief from! Acupuncture loosens tight muscles to relieve nerve compression, allows the muscles to stretch properly and brings blood flow into the area so the injury can heal. It’s awesome!!!

So, if you are sitting there and reading this with a pain that you’ve been getting around to dealing with, don’t wait any longer! The faster you act, the faster you can be pain-free.