Symptoms of pulled chest muscle

Definition and manifestation

A pulled chest muscle, as the name itself suggests, is a condition where the muscles in our chest areat get damaged from over-stretching or over-straining. The fiber from which our muscles are made get torn or damaged and we feel pain and inability to move the hurt area naturally.

Many factors may cause this condition. Since most of us do not strain our upper limbs too much on a daily basis, this injury is mostly connected to athletes or people who do hard physical work daily. These sport or sport like activities involves weight lifting stretching and sudden movement of the upper part of one's body gives way to this kind of injury.

Pain is the best indicator

Depending on the severity of the injury, pulled chest muscle may hurt in more ways than one. Pain can be felt instantly after the injury, but it often takes few hours or even a few days for the real painful effect to “kick in”. At first, any movement of the chest, or arms and shoulders in that respect, is followed by pain while in time it becomes very hard for the injured person to move the limbs at all especially when the inflammation and swelling appear.

Since, as mentioned before, there are more ways of pain that one, there exist certain levels of pulled chest muscle injury. The first level involves a mere sensation of discomfort while all the physical actions may be performed without any significant problems. Gradually worse the second level manifests itself through swelling and inflammation of the injured area accompanied by sharp pain when indulging yourself into more advanced stretching and muscle straining activities. Finally the third is the most severe level stands for an injury followed by swelling and bruising, excruciating pain, muscle spasms and the high level of painful muscle sensitivity to straining of any sort.

Recuperation and recovery

First of all, the best prevention of this condition is proper warming up before any serious physical exercise. However, if the damage had already been done resting and restraining yourself from any advance physical activity is a must. The healing process is not a short one, thus you must give your muscles adequate time to heal.

Applying cold compression to the injured spot may reduce or remove the swelling and the inflammation but for other recovery tips and assistance it is best to contact a professional instead of doing things on your own and making it only worse.