Diabetes and muscle pain, muscle pain and diabetes, no matter the order, if you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, chances are your increased pain was one of the tell-tale signs. Now that you are sure you have it and are being treated for it, diabetes determines your how little or how much pain you feel each day. Diabetes muscle pain can range from numbness in the fingers and feet, tingling in the legs, to more serious, yet unfortunately frequent locked shoulders. There is no reason to sit and wait for muscle pain and diabetes to tie you down. But if diabetes is just about “the sugars,” why does it hurt so much?
Through Thick or Thin?
The pain you are feeling is caused by the reduced blood flow in your body. When blood is prevented from circulating optimally to all the muscle groups, your soft tissue can thicken. You can get swelling in places, especially the hands, which makes it difficult to even use the muscles, causing atrophy. Thickened skin can lead to “dead spots,”which reduces oxygen flow in the body and muscles. Your skin, or epidermis, needs to be pushed off the body by consistent cell growth and blood circulation every 25 – 45 days. If your blood is flowing properly, your muscles and tendons can “change their coat,” maintaing enough room for stretching, lifting, bending and extending.
Without a consistent supply of oxygenated blood, your muscles start to ache. Eventually this builds into throbbing, burning, or tingling sensations. Any movement that uses the affected area will generate those symptoms. Eventually, this can evolve into cramping and/or “locked joints,” a condition where the tendons are wasting away (they are offline, not really being used) and thus the joint stiffens and looses significant range of motion. Unconsciously, you may start to avoid activity that makes you uncomfortable and achy. The less you do, the more the muscles are starved for blood. This is what causes the excruciating pain. There are other causes of pain in the diabetic’s body.
Neuropathy is Not Muscle Pain
Neuropathy hurts. Though it is eventually the complete loss of sensation in your feet or hands, as the nerves in those areas experience excessive damage due to elevated insulin levels, the pain can become confused with muscle pain. You can usually tell if it is diabetic neuropathy if only the legs and feet are involved. The shoulders and hands are much more likely to be involved if you are experiencing diabetes muscle pain.
Staying Loose
The last thing on anyone’s mind when they are in pain is “oh, I should really exercise now that I am hurting like this,” that is unless they are an obsessed weight lifter. Diabetes pain is not a case of “no pain no gain.” In fact, it could quickly become the opposite for you: the more pain you experience, the less likely you will exercise when you are not in pain for fear that you might trigger the pain. This is normal, well placed fear. But sitting around contributes to heightened pain.
Instead, talk to your doctor about making physical or occupational therapy part of your recovery regime. A trained movement therapist can create a set of exercises tailored to your body and pain level. The exercises might include deep breathing exercises, range of motion exercises, walking and passive exercises such as resting on a small ball. Whatever you decide to do, make your action plan with the help of your entire medical support team.
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