Muscle weakness is considered a potential issue among those who aim to lose weight through effective workouts. You can confirm it when you experience difficulty in working with your muscles, especially if they fail to obey you while performing normal contractions or movement. The medical industry named it myasthenia which implies a condition of losing muscle strength in a single muscle or more.
Things That Causes Muscle Weakness
Muscle weakness is more a symptom rather than a condition. It commonly occurs as a complementary to a number of other health issues like:
- Fluctuations in thyroid levels: either it is hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism, it can result in muscle weakness.
- Autoimmune diseases: there are times When your immune system itself starts its attacks against you. Conditions like Graves’ Disease, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and myasthenia gravis are examples of it.
- Neuromuscular disease: they include multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophies, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
- Imbalances in electrolytes or minerals: these include deficiencies in potassium, magnesium, or even a hike in the calcium levels in the blood.
- Herniated disc
- Chronic fatigue syndrome
- Stroke
- Hypotonia where you loses the tone of your muscles
- Nerve Damages like peripheral neuropathy
- Alcoholism, etc
It is also clear that overuse of certain drugs as well as other external causes leads you to muscle damage and weakness, they include severe injuries or attacks of certain viruses.
Diagnosis Of Muscle Weakness
You can experience muscle weakness at any point in your life, whether it be between your workout sessions or performing your usual chores. So, whenever you feel something fishy or abnormal while performing any of your movements related to your muscles, just consider, it is time to seek medical advice to resolve the issue.
Then you will be stunned how easily a doctor can tell things that you are unable to express through words even if you can experience them. While diagnosing you, he will ask certain questions related to your condition, its symptoms, and even your family medical history. He will mark your reflex, senses, and the tone of your muscles, and it is the basic diagnosis he will provide you with.
Just in case he didn’t get enough details to find the route cause to determine the most suited treatment for you, you may need to undergo some other tests like,
- Nerve tests
- CT scans
- MRI
- EMG
Treating Muscle Weakness
After a clear diagnosis, your doctor would be able to detect the real cause and other related issues in your body to decide on the right treatment. And to determine the right method, he will have to consider facts like the intensity of your condition, and other weaknesses.
If you really think you lose the strength of your muscles or feel weaker yourself, you don’t need to panic as there are a number of treatments that ensure you regain the previous optimal condition of your muscle.
The better options to treat muscle weakness include:
Physiotherapy
Physiotherapy is effective for many conditions related to your muscles. They range from simple to complex exercises to improve the performance and strength of your muscles. Here, you should be assisted with a therapist, who can give you the right exercise suggestions, and ensure that you are doing everything in the correct way. Sometimes, the root cause can be the lack of muscle use. And performing physiotherapy can improve the flexibility and endurance of your muscles.
You will be practicing effective stretching and other recommended movements with or without particular devices to eliminate stiffness from your muscles and make it easier to work with them.
Occupational therapy
Here also you will have to perform a range of motions or exercises to regain strength, especially in your upper body. Just like in physiotherapy, you will either be instructed to use equipment or work out on your own. More than helping you to do advanced movements, it is more recommended to help you to make the day-to-day movements easier.
Usually, people who survived the attacks of stroke are recommended to practice it, to rehabilitate themselves. In that case, this therapy will be more focused upon the particular side of your body which becomes inactive.
Medications
To tackle the issues of muscle weakness, you will also be provided with certain medicines like OTC pain relievers to give you relief from pain. Like if you are suffering from hypothyroidism, you will have to undergo thyroid replacement treatments.
The standard medicines given here are:
- Ibuprofen
- Acetaminophen
- Levothyroxine, etc.
Muscle weaknesses are not to be ignored as they can be indicating certain serious issues. So it is always feasible to seek the help of a physician before things get even worse. Then you will be given the right treatment to resolve the issue and back to normalcy. But at the same time you follow your doctor’s instructions, you have to welcome certain dietary changes to diminish deficiencies, if there are any. In some rare cases, you will be in need of surgery but it doesn’t mean you have to opt for it all the time.