Muscle & Tendon Inflammation Health Video

Muscle and tendon inflammation is a painful experience but is easily treatable. Learn more about what it is and how to treat it in this medical video clip.

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Rest
Stretch
Ice
Anti-inflammatories

About this Author

Walt Lowe, M.D., specializes in sports medicine with an emphasis on diagnosing and treating a wide range of knee, shoulder and elbow injuries and disorders. He is certified by the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and serves as the head team physician for the NFL Houston Texans, University of Houston, Houston Baptist University and many area high schools. He is also an orthopedic knee and shoulder consultant for the Houston Rockets and a consultant for NASA.Dr. Lowe is an associate professor in the department of orthopedic surgery at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Lowe is the director of Baylor Sports Medicine Fellowship and the chief of the Sports Medicine Section.Lowe received a B.A. from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. He received his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. After completing an internship at John Peter Smith Hospital and a residency at Tarrant County Affiliated Hospitals in Fort Worth, Texas, Lowe completed a fellowship at the renowned Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in Los Angeles. While there, Lowe spent a year studying under sports medicine baseball surgeon Frank Jobe, M.D.

DR. WALT LOWE: We're here to talk about muscle and tendon inflammation. It's important to know first that tendons hook muscles to bone. So when one part of that unit is inflamed, generally there are symptoms in the other part of that unit. Now, I think this can mean a couple of different things, and so inflammation is a catch-all word for pain. And most commonly, muscle--especially muscle pain after athletic activities, so this is more of something we should call soreness or delayed muscle soreness than it is a true inflammation. And this soreness you get after athletic activity that comes on the next day is even worse the next day typically comes from an accumulation of lactic acid within the muscles, tightness within the muscles. And then if this isn't addressed, that's where we can see inflammation start to spread from the muscle down in to the tendon. Treatment for muscle and tendon inflammation is generally rest from the athletic activity, stretching to regain normal range of motion, ice to the muscle that is having the symptoms in it, and some low doses of the anti-inflammatory medicines may be helpful early on for the pain that comes from this inflammation. There are preventative ways to prevent this, and that is to increase your training gradually as you go and not take any big leaps in athletic activity from one day to the next that you have not been trained and prepared to do. If you will take this gradual approach to increasing your athletic activities, the chances of ending up with muscle and tendon inflammation are much lower.