Help! I’ve Got Painful Shin Splints
As you get elderly regular exercise becomes much more important. Muscle wastage will take place as we get older because our metabolism slows down. In other words we burn less calories. This means that even if we don′t eat any more gradual weight gain is unavoidable and we start to pile on the extra pounds.
This additional weight your gaining is slow but relentless. If you’d suddenly piled on 20 pounds you’d notice it straight away but one or two pounds a year is easily missed. That weight you put on while on holiday never seems to go away like it used to and your dresses appear to be getting smaller!
You decide enough is enough and start an exercise program. As part of your program you start running or jogging. At first you don′t have a problem but after a couple of months the front of your shins become uncomfortable. Chances are you have Shin Splints.
I always thought that only horses got splints. Work a young horse too much on hard ground, and you were asking for him to get one ” making him lame for months, sometimes. Well, humans aren′t so different!
I love to jog and use it as my fundamental method of keeping fit. Imagine my horror when after a short distance I began to get a dull ache down the front of my legs. At the beginning I put it down to my age and just kept running trusting it would go away after I’d warmed up a bit.
Being an optimist I hoped the problem would go away all on it’s own. How wrong I was, far from going away the pain in my lower legs got much worse. The more I ran the worse it got until in the end I couldn′t even finish my training and you could often see me hobbling home muttering under my breath.
Shin Splints has nothing to do with splints. It is simply the name used when the long, thin muscle on the front of your lower leg is overused and gets inflamed ” sort of Repetitive Strain Injury in the leg ” and, as I learned when I went to train as a Sports Therapist can be treated.
Tags: diet, exercise, fat, Fitness, health, jog, jogging, leg, running, running pain, shin splints, Weight loss, workout
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