Symptoms of a Pulled Hamstring

Symptoms of a Pulled Hamstring
Symptoms are dependent on the severity of your hamstring injury. With a mild injury you may only notice tightness in the hamstring muscles, however, a more serious injury can cause weakness and severe pain in the posterior thigh. Common symptoms of hamstring pulls include: Hamstring Pain A sharp pain or twinges may be felt along the length of your hamstring or at a specific point on the back of your thigh. You may experience tenderness and/or muscle spasms in your hamstring muscle during active and resistive movements. Pain often increases when pressure is applied to the injured hamstring muscles. It is possible to experience only mild pain when walking even if a tear in the muscle occurs, however, pain will increase if strenuous exercise is attempted. An avulsion, or complete tear causes extreme pain, even during rest. The torn tissue may bunch in the back of the thigh causing even more pain when the leg is bent. If you have a chronic injury, you may feel more of a dull ache that lasts for long periods of time. Pain can be experienced while sitting or walking up or down stairs/hills. Decreased Flexibility You may experience stiffness or decreased range of motion (ROM) as a result of a pulled hamstring muscle. The tightness at the back of your thigh will make it difficult to flex your knee or straighten your leg. Your gait may be affected, or you may limp when you walk if the stiffness causes discomfort. Muscle spasm may also occur in the injured hamstring. Injury can make the muscle and/or nerves behave abnormally and improper contraction signals may be sent to the brain causing the muscle to spasm. Swelling and Bruising Swelling in your hamstring muscles is a result of your tissues becoming inflamed; this normally occurs with a more serious hamstring strain. Warmth and redness may accompany swelling in severe cases. You may also feel a gap, dent or bulge in your muscle that is not normally present. Occasionally, bruising (hamstring contusion) and discoloration over your hamstring muscle may appear immediately or after a few days with severe hamstring strains. Weakness Weakness or complete loss of function of your hamstring muscle can also be experienced as a result of a pulled hamstring. This along with your other symptoms may make it difficult for you to walk or run and can result in you walking with a limp. With an avulsion, or rupture, you will experience difficulties walking without assistance, a cane, or crutches. You could even feel a gap in your muscle with a complete tear. Popping Noise A popping or snapping sensation at the back of your thigh can often be heard and felt when your hamstring muscles are tearing. This often happens with a large force of hip flexion when your knee is extended (straightened) and may cause you to fall to the ground. Pulled Hamstring Treatments Hamstring pulls are frustrating to live with and healing can take a long time because it's difficult to give your leg the rest it needs. This is especially true for runners and other athletes that return to their sport too early. Re-injury is common but it prolongs recovery and may also lead to permanent damage and other conditions. Treating your hamstring strain correctly is essential to getting rid of your pain and restoring function to your upper thigh. Proper treatment will get you back to regular activities sooner, stop your pain, and reduce the risk of future re-injury. To restore strength and range of motion in your hamstrings, treatment should focus on preventing scar tissue formation and muscle atrophy (shrinkage and weakening of the muscle). This requires rest and the appropriate therapies at the right time. Almost all types of hamstring pulls and tears (except a complete hamstring rupture) can be properly treated with trusted therapies that are available for use at home. Complete ruptures usually require surgery. However, using these home therapies after surgery can help speed recovery, improve function, and increase range of motion in your hamstrings. Step 1 - Reduce Pain & Swelling with the Leg Freezie Wrap® The 1st step for conservative treatment of your hamstring injury is to reduce swelling to "open up" the area for more blood flow. Anyone in the health-care business knows that your blood supplies the oxygen and much needed nutrients required for your hamstring to heal naturally. This is why doctors and surgeons recommend cold compression therapy within the first 72 hours of an injury and following meniscus surgery. Cold compression therapy is recommended to reduce pain, swelling and tissue damage. Many doctors, surgeons and physical therapists consider cold compression therapy to be the gold standard for treatment of inflammation and pain. On-going cold compression treatments can reduce, or even eliminate, the need for NSAIDs or other medications that can be harmful to your body. Cold compression therapy is known and trusted by most medical professionals. This is why for years doctors, trainers and other medical professionals have recommended RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) to treat the pain and swelling of fresh injuries, chronic pain, after any re-injury, and especially after surgery. Although RICE can help to treat these symptoms, ice and inferior gel packs reach temperatures so low they can cause cryoburn, an ice burn on your skin. The problem is, up until now there hasn't been any other option to treat painful conditions and injuries with effective cold compression, so ice and blue gel packs (full of anti-freeze and chemicals) have been the only choice up until now. Fortunately you no longer have to settle for these ice cold methods that are uncomfortably cold against your skin, provide short term relief, cause ice burns, and numb your skin and underlying tissue beyond feeling so you don't even notice the ice burn until it's too late. You can also get rid of those cold packs that warm up soon after you pull them out of the freezer and gel that pools around your injury putting the short-term cold everywhere expect for where you need it most - on your hamstring injury! The Leg Freezie Wrap® is the cold compression tool you need for your post-surgical recovery to treat yourself in an effective and convenient way. When used on a hamstring injury, our Leg Freezie Wrap® provides: The highest-level of cold compression to quickly decrease pain, swelling, inflammation and draw the heat out of your hamstring. Tailored wraps that are available to conform around and treat your hamstring. Effective cold compression that is unlike any other cold compression wrap out there. Cold temperatures that stay right over your hamstring injury for the entire length of your treatment. A home-based solution with consistent (daily) cold treatments that reduces swelling fast, and opens up your hamstring to receive the blood flow circulation needed to heal quickly and naturally. Heavier, more substantial gel packs containing a special formulation of gel - called RigiGel®. RigiGel® is our trademarked name for a unique gel formula that's made of food-grade, non-toxic material that holds the cold for an extended period of time. This specially formulated gel also features non-migrating gel technology that makes our line of Freezie Wraps® truly different from any other wrap available on the market. RigiGel® is a patented formula that gives you: More cooling power per pound than standard cold compression wraps. More gel than other wraps, meaning every time you put one on it will keep your hamstring cold for a longer period; pain relief is enhanced and swelling is better controlled. Our special RigiGel® packs can be chilled in the fridge or freezer to tailor the amount of cold that you need for your injury. It doesn't matter how you cool it down, because our gel packs are chock full of gel that's designed to cool down into millions of tiny snowflakes. This method of cooling means our gel packs aren't icy-cold, just perfectly cold enough to give you the most effective cold compression available. The cushioned gel will wrap around your leg and it won't budge for the entire treatment period. You'll no longer have to deal with annoying pooling around your hamstring or have to hold a hard block of ice on your injury! This is important because once blood vessels are blocked or damaged, they can no longer carry oxygenated blood through the tissue and tissue cells begin to break-down. Without cold compression therapy cellular break-down and tissue damage continues as the cells don't get the oxygen they need to survive. By limiting the amount of damage done to your hamstring, you also limit the amount of healing that needs to occur. This is a very important step to heal hamstring injuries faster and with less pain! This is why you need to treat your hamstring injury, when you notice pain / swelling / inflammation, or directly after a re-injury. Applying a Leg Freezie Wrap® right away will stop the damage immediately and unblock your blood vessels to let your body's natural blood flow in to start healing the tissue. It'll seem weird for you to read this, but there are a LOT of people out there that don't understand how fast cold compression with a Freezie Wrap® can get the swelling / inflammation in your hamstring under control! After you get rid of the swelling for good you can start actually dealing with your hamstring injury and the healing needed after surgery. Step 2 - Improve Circulation & Prevent Re-Injury with Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy™ There are a lot of people that think their hamstring injury is gone after their swelling and inflammation are gone and their leg feels better. They also make the mistake of returning to regular activities too soon without proper time for healing. The truth is that healing takes time and after the swelling is gone your hamstring injury isn't even close to being fully healed. After the inflammation in and around your hamstring has been reduced, providing extra blood flow and strengthening the tissue in your hamstring is recommended. Believe it or not, the best time for you to focus on avoiding re-injury and strengthening your weakened hamstring is when the swelling's gone and your injury's started to heal. It's vital that you don't go back to activities too soon because you might bring on a major set-back in your recovery... Have you recently re-injured your hamstring by returning to your normal daily activities too quickly? How many times in the past have you aggravated your hamstring injury just trying to perform basic tasks around your house? Is your hamstring preventing you from work or activities you love to do? The answer is simple. Your body can heal itself and it's the blood in your body that makes it all happen. Your blood is how everything that's good inside of you is transported directly to your injured hamstring. Your blood carries oxygen, nutrients, water and antibodies right to the source of your injury and pain. Bringing proper blood flow to your injured hamstring is essential to healing. Promoting blood flow around injured tissue to help the body heal itself is a concept that's been used for centuries. Oxygen and nutrients, carried in your own blood, are critical for the body to heal itself. Without proper blood flow, recovering from your hamstring injury will be delayed... Sometimes for a very long period of time. Even though the concept is simple, improving blood flow to your hamstring can be difficult. Traditional methods require you to move your damaged hamstring in order to promote blood flow. This same motion that promotes blood flow can also make your pain and hamstring injury much worse (especially if you need to immobilize your leg at any point during your recovery process). Relying on movement alone to increase blood flow puts you in danger of re-injuring your hamstring. So what do you do when you need to increase blood flow, but you can't move your hamstring without re-injuring your tissue? Using Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy™ (BFST®), will help with your recovery and heal your hamstring more completely. BFST® increases the amount of blood that flows naturally to your soft tissue to nourish your hamstring muscle, improving elasticity and speeding the healing process. This increased Blood Flow Stimulation Therapy™ to your damaged hamstring is greatly needed to complete your healing and avoid re-injury once and for all. The only way to get BFST® is through use of an Inferno Wrap®. The Inferno Wrap® is the only treatment method that improves blood flow and circulation on a deep tissue level. Other methods of warming / heating tissue (hot water bottles, hot baths, etc) will only ever increase blood flow on a surface / skin level. These methods need a LOT of time to even reach your damaged hamstring on a deep tissue level. And even if you were to use them this long your skin would heat up to an uncomfortable level and may even burn you. The best source of heat treatment is from a product where you don't even feel that much heat. When you don't feel the heat, it means the therapy is working in your deep soft tissue which is really where you need it. It's kind of like how your heart works in your body. You can't "feel" your heart pumping blood all around your body to your arms and legs. You can't even hear your own heartbeat without listening very closely. This is exactly how deep tissue BFST® works too! You're not supposed to "feel" a lot of heat because the heat isn't treating your skin, it's treating your hamstring, increasing the blood flow right where your injury is! When treating a hamstring injury, an effective therapy will increase blood flow to the injury while the leg is immobile. This increase in blood flow will accelerate the body's own ability to heal itself. The Inferno Wrap® is the most highly effective blood flow stimulation device that you'll find on the market that is approved by the FDA for use in the home or hospital. Regular treatments with a Leg Inferno Wrap® can reduce pain and stiffness from scar tissue and increase overall flexibility in your leg. Increased blood flow will whisk away damaged tissue, toxins, and any bacteria in your injured hamstring to promote more effective healing. Getting rid of toxins will allow all of the positive healing processes to start in your injury. Increasing blood flow will also increase the amount of oxygen that's being sent to your injured tissue AND boost your tissue's ability to absorb oxygen. (reference: 1) Every Leg Inferno Wrap® contains a patented Energy Web® that's flexible and shaped to conform around your leg. The Energy Web® provides a uniform wave of healing electromagnetic energy over the entire treatment area. This energy travels deep inside your soft tissue to stimulate blood flow on the deep tissue level where it's needed to heal your injury. It's the electromagnetic energy provided provided by our Inferno Wraps® that's crucial to the healing process. Electromagnetic energy is the only way to get your blood flow moving on a deep tissue level for these reasons: Electromagnetic energy waves are not heat waves. When emitted from the Inferno Wrap®, electromagnetic energy waves penetrate right through your skin and fat layers until they get to your damaged tissue. Once these energy waves reach your injured hamstring, they're absorbed and quickly converted into heat energy right at the location of your injury The idea of electromagnetic energy waves is slowly catching on in North American, but the truth is, it's a technology that's been used for decades Many people just don't know that over the past 30 years, researchers in Japan and China have completed extensive studies on the use of electromagnetic energy for healing and their findings have been impressive. Success has been reported in studies from countries like Sweden and Germany. Research is continuing and soon, much of North American will know what the Far East and Europe has known for a long time... Electromagnetic energy provides a wide range of health benefits for those not only suffering from a hamstring injury, but for many other soft tissue injuries as well. Regular treatment with the electromagnetic energy in our Inferno Wraps® will ensure: Your pain will be reduced. Your injured hamstring will heal at an accelerated rate with reduced potential for re-injury. Your hamstring will have a larger range of motion and increased extensibility of collagen tissue. (Chapter 9 of "Therapeutic Heat and Cold", 4th edition. (amazon.com link - Ed. Justus F. Lehmann, M.D., Williams, and Wilkin) Our Inferno Wraps® are uniquely patented designs that are better than other alternatives out there for more than just the electromagnetic energy they provide! Our wraps are made from medical-grade material - this should be as important to you as it is to us. Other products that are sold in stores are considered "consumer goods" meaning the material only needs to be as good as a sweater that you wear. Clothing articles like this don't need to meet high standards of production or materials and may include materials that irritate your skin. Since our wraps are medical-grade products registered with the FDA, they are of a higher quality and need to meet way more standards for manufacturing (ISO 10993 - biocompatibility testing). This makes our wraps the safest product to increase blood flow circulation. Our manufacturer has spent years perfecting the wrap design to make sure you get the treatment you deserve! Step 3 - Use the Knee-Flex® to Exercise At Home & Prevent Scar Tissue Build-Up The final step in hamstring injury recovery is stretching - this is a critical step for complete recovery from your strained hamstring! When your hamstring is injured, stretching plays a huge role in treating your injury with or without surgery... This is especially true if you're immobilizing your leg after surgery with a cast, brace or by using crutches. Long-term immobilization of your leg can lead to massive amounts of scar tissue that stiffens the entire area and causes your surrounding tissue to atrophy (waste away). For many people stretching seems like a basic thing but you'd be surprised by how many people there are that don't understand the importance of stretching any hamstring injury, especially after surgery. Each of your legs support an intense amount of weight everyday. When you suffer from a hamstring injury you're unable to support your own weight in the same way you used to. This can make simple tasks like walking or even standing extremely difficult for you. A full recovery from your hamstring injury depends on your commitment to stretching and strengthening exercises. Physical therapists prescribe gentle stretching of your hamstring before making the transition to crutches after surgery and as you recover from having to use immobilization tools like a brace. They don't prescribe this to annoy you - it's in fact the most important part of your hamstring recovery. You probably know someone that chose not to do any stretching - and they paid a high price for it. By not listening to their therapist (ie. not stretching), there is a huge chance of re-injurying your hamstring or even getting a more serious injury than your original hamstring injury. Ask any physical therapist and they'll tell you the key to a successful recovery is commitment to at home exercise! I spent a very long time searching for this treatment option to specifically aid in the recovery of hamstring injuries. I was introduced to a carpenter (let's call him Paul) about 1 year ago. Paul had designed and created this device especially for his friend Earl that was trying to recover from a bad knee injury. The muscles, tendons and ligaments in and around his knee joint were seizing up from decreased use (immobility). Earl was instructed by his doctor to put his foot in a plastic garbage bag while sitting. After his foot was in the bag, Earl was supposed to stretch his leg and strengthen his knee by sliding his foot forward and backward across the floor. Earl complained of the intense pain he felt when the bag would crease, fold over, and jerk his knee around with inconsistent movement. If Earl had continued down this path, he would've re-injured his knee and end up with even more serious injuries in his hip, lower back, thigh and foot! Luckily for Earl, his friend Paul created the very first Knee-Flex® Passive Stretching Device. Earl's knee recovered 10 years ago, but Paul continues making more and more of the Knee-Flex® devices every year - mostly for therapy clinics and hospitals in Canada that keep asking for his Knee-Flex® Device. This seemingly simple device has assisted in the recovery of thousands of patients that have suffered many various injuries. Once a patient is on the path to healing, this device assists the patient in making a fast and full recovery. The Knee-Flex® Passive Hamstring Stretching Device helps with: Hamstring post-surgery rehabilitation efforts. Recovery from serious hamstring injuries. Increasing flexibility in surrounding tendons, ligaments and muscles. Stretching out scar tissue that forms while your hamstring heals with or without surgery. Decreasing muscle stiffness. Preventing atrophy in surrounding soft tissue from immobilization. The Knee-Flex® Hamstring Stretching Device was created to allow your heel to slide smoothly in a controlled environment, minimizing the chance of re-injury and additional pain. Physical therapists encounter the same issues every day when attempting to work with people who are undergoing therapy from a serious hamstring injury or recovery from hamstring surgery. This is why most therapists in Canada instantly purchased these same devices for their own clinics and have been ordering this device for 10 years! If you're recovering from serious pain, it allows a more controlled and comfortable method to stretch and strengthen your hamstring as well as all of the soft tissue (tendons, ligaments, muscles) in your entire leg. The sliding mechanism is extremely smooth and durable, as well as linear - something that becomes very important in such cases. When used properly, the Knee-Flex® has a proven track record of assisting in the speedy recovery of many people suffering from hamstring injuries. With regular use of the Knee-Flex® at home, you'll be able to: Build muscle strength in your hamstring. Increase mobility and range of motion (ROM) in your hamstring. Speed overall healing of your hamstring injury. Prevent soft tissue muscle loss (atrophy) in your hamstring. Improve soft tissue / muscular function and capability. Encourage overall leg flexibility. Facilitate a proper warm up for regular exercise. Promote healthy circulation in your hamstring and all of the tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints in your leg. Even when you're injured and in pain you need to keep moving to break up scar tissue that's forming around your hamstring. Moving when you're injured is hard. Since moving while injured can be painful - most people think it's better to stop moving, rest their body and hope that their hamstring will heal all on its' own. Even though rest is important to recovery too much rest during the recovery process will increase the amount of scar tissue on your hamstring. During the healing process your body will fill in tears in your soft tissue with dense, brittle tissue called "scar tissue". The human body will use scar tissue as a temporary solution and will try to build the scar tissue as fast as possible to heal the area. Scar tissue can form fast to bind everything together in and around your injured hamstring, but working fast doesn't mean that the job's done right. When scar tissue forms it doesn't come together as neatly as regular (healthy) soft tissue would. Scar tissue fibers will lay down over top of the damage in your hamstring in a cluttered, messy and jumbled up way. Imagine throwing a bunch of drinking straws in the air... Those straws will land in a random, unorganized way. It seems silly to think that those straws could land perfectly straight and all in the same direction. This is how scar tissue works. The scar tissue that forms on your hamstring will be unorganized and won't line up properly with the healthy tissue surrounding your muscle. This scar tissue will also attach to everything in and around your hamstring, including the surrounding healthy tissue as well. This can result in a long-term fusing together of your tissue that stiffens up your entire leg, reducing your mobility and making your hamstring injury even more painful! This is why scar tissue is weak and only a temporary solution to heal your hamstring injury. Scar tissue is something that needs to be dealt with fast. If you try to get back into your regular daily activities with a mound of scar tissue on your hamstring you'll have a higher risk of re-injury. Scar tissue is just not built to withstand the pressures of regular activity. If you have an injured hamstring with a lot of scar tissue and re-injure that tissue, even more scar tissue will grow to fill in those tears. If you keep falling into the dangerous cycle of re-injuring your hamstring without proper treatment you could end up with massive amounts of scar tissue on your hamstring. Your ability to move this muscle in a normal way will be impaired as the amount of scar tissue increases. This can easily be achieved with regular use of the Knee-Flex® Passive Hamstring Stretching Device. This device provides a sturdy hardwood track with an easy gliding motion giving you the same stretch everytime. Your movement is controlled reducing your risk of re-injury. The result is a consistent stretch that helps to break down your scar tissue and improve flexibility during your post-op recovery. It may seem hard to believe, but our Leg Freezie Wrap®, Inferno Wrap® and Knee-Flex® home therapy products will assist you in recovering from your injury by reducing your swelling and inflammation induced pain and maximizing blood flow where it's needed most. Here at AidYourHamstring we pride ourselves in helping you with your healing and recovery process. Everyone at AidYourHamstring has tested and used the products, finding solutions to conditions that do not fit into the norm. This dedication to our customers and our products goes hand-in-hand with our guarantees to you as a customer: Guarantee #1 - Use your products diligently for up to 60 days and you will experience a significant reduction in pain. If not, I encourage you to send back the items for a 100% refund. Guarantee #2 - You will not be left in the dark after purchasing any product from us. AidYourHamstring Advisers and Product Specialists are available 7 days a week by toll free phone 1-866-237-9608 or email to answer your questions or concerns. Guarantee #3 - Your order is guaranteed to be shipped within 24 hours on every business day. Guarantee #4 - All purchases receive a one year, full replacement warranty with guaranteed, prompt service. Guarantee #5 - You could save hundreds of dollars and possibly more, by utilizing our products, and getting back to work sooner. Learn more about how the Leg Freezie Wrap® is designed to be the most effective cold compression wrap on the market today. Learn more about how the Leg Inferno Wrap® helps with the healing process. Learn more about how regular stretching with the Knee-Flex® will help to break up scar tissue in your hamstring. Original article and pictures take http://www.aidyourhamstring.com/pulled-hamstring/pulled-hamstring-symptoms.php site