What is side strain?
Side strain is a muscular tear of abdominal muscles. Mainly the tear occurs in the internal oblique muscle. Specially cricketers (fast bowlers), golfers, javelin throwers are commonly suffered from side strain.
What are the causes for side strain?
️Rapid movement of oblique or side back muscles is the main cause to get a side strain. In sports activities, movements associated with bowling and throwing cause lengthening of muscle, which leads to muscle rupture.
Other common causes are as following.
Chronic cough or sneezing
Sit-ups
Lifting
Rowling
Overall lack of core strength
Sport activities (cricket, golf, tennis…)
What are the symptoms of the side strain?
Symptoms of the side strain mainly depends on the severity of the injury. We can categorize side strain into main three degrees considering the severity of the injury.
First degree – Mild strain with damage to only a few muscle fibers
Second degree – Partial tear of muscle and involves more muscle fibers
Third degree – Complete tear of muscle or a tear of the muscle from the tendon.
Though there are three degrees, most people will suffer only from first degree.
If you are suffering from a first-degree strain, you may experience tightness and pain near lower ribs. If you feel this pain, you should not continue with activities that can aggravate the strain.
If you are suffering from higher degree of strain, you will have following symptoms.
Sharp, sudden pain with movements
Muscle spasms
Pain with any movement of the upper body
Side muscle is sore to the touch
Pain with taking a deep breath, coughing or sneezing
Bruising at the site of the injury
What are the treatments for side strain?
️Medication- Doctors prescribe medicine to decrease the swelling and pain.
️Rest is a must as a treatment. You should not continue activities that involve movement or stretching of your side muscles. Muscle needs time to heal.
️Ice and heat therapy- you can use ice pack to calm inflammation and dull pain. It should be done under the observation of professionals. Using ice for prolong time may harm to your skin. Also, you can use hot wrap to improve blood flow to site of injury. This will provide more Oxygen and nutrients for muscles which needs for a speedy recovery.
️Back brace- Side strain back brace will compress the injured area. This compression can decrease swelling and improve healing process.
️Exercises- Exercises will help you to improve healing process but it should be done under the observation of physiotherapist.
️Physiotherapists play a huge role in treatments of side strain.
How to prevent from side strains?
You can prevent from side strains by strengthening core muscles. To strength core muscles, you can do strengthening exercises.
When you involve into sports activities, it is better to have proper warm up and stretching exercises in order to prevent from side strains.
References:
https://www.vivehealth.com/blogs/resources/side-strain
https://p360.physio/condition/side-strain/
https://physioworks.com.au/pain-injury/thoracic-pain/side-strain-abdominal/
Fazmiya Noordeen
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