Common Running Injuries: Prevention and Treatment

 There are a variety of injuries that runners can sustain and the first step to taking care of them is to know the symptoms of running injuries and how to properly treat them. However, many of these causes of injuries are not even recognized until it's too late to do anything about it, so it's important to know how to prevent injuries before you run.

Common Running Injuries The most common type of injury for runners is repetitive stress injury or a runner's heel sprain. This type of injury is caused by repetitive movements of the feet, such as when you're running. This occurs in the tendons and ligaments of your foot. Other common injuries include tennis elbow, plantar fasciitis and shin splints. If you experience any of these, you should seek medical attention right away to avoid further complications.

Knee Injuries Another common type of injury is knee arthritis. Arthritis occurs when the bones in your knees are wearing away from one another and often makes it difficult for you to walk or move. It's a pain in your lower back and you may feel a lot of pain while running.

To prevent any of these common running injuries, it's important to keep your weight down and stretch before you run. Also, keep your body aligned. Running on uneven surfaces, such as a hard surface, can cause your knees to wear away from each other and cause pain.

In order to treat your injury, you should be checked by a doctor to make sure that you have all of the right symptoms of a common running injury and that there aren't any underlying conditions causing them. Most doctors will perform a test called a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan to get an accurate diagnosis of what type of injury you have. Your doctor will also want to make sure that your symptoms aren't caused by a more serious medical condition.

If you do experience any of the common running injuries above, your doctor will prescribe a certain amount of medication, usually prescribed by a podiatrist or orthopedic doctor. For many types of injuries, pain killers will help to reduce the pain and swelling as well as promote the healing process. Many medications have anti-inflammatory properties that help to reduce inflammation.

In most cases, you can get relief from the pain and discomfort from the common running injuries by simply stretching the affected area. In some cases, you might require surgery to repair the damage to the tissues in the joint if you don't use stretching techniques.

Prevention is always better than a cure for the common running injuries. Using the proper techniques and keeping your weight down can help you minimize the risk of getting injured.