Pain Lower Leg? It Could Be Shin Splints

We all need to exercise on a regular basis, especially as we get older. If you don’t, your muscles will waste as part of the typical ageing process, your metabolism will require fewer calories to function, and even if you eat no more than you ever did, you will start putting on the pounds.

This increase in weight is slow but sure. At first it’s just couple of pounds here and there, hardly noticeable. The weight you put on after Christmas just doesn’t seem to come off like it used to. Suddenly you discover to your horror your clothes are getting tighter and your out of breath climbing the stairs.

If you’re like most people the first type of workout you’ll think of taking up is running or jogging. Running can make you feel good and it burns a lot of calories, so far so good. The problem becomes noticeable after a number of months. You have severe pain down the front of your leg when running. Chances are you’ve developed Shin Splints.

I’ve been around horses all my life and always knew if you worked them on very hard ground they were likely to develop splints. Now splints in a horse can leave them lame (limping) for a long time. I never realised the same could happen to us. In humans though it’s called Shin Splints.

I love to jog and use it as my main method of keeping fit. Imagine my horror when after a short distance I started to develop 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.

It didn’t. The pain got worse and worse, until I was close to tears. I kept stopping and rubbing my shins, but it didn’t help, and I eventually had to give up and hobble home ” fed up to the back teeth and as bad-tempered as a weasel. When I rested for a day or two, the pain went, but it came back as soon as I tried again.

You would think that if you had Shin Splints you had a Splint. Not so, Shin Splints refers to an overuse of the long muscles down the front of your lower legs. The muscles get overused and get inflamed – this is what causes the pain. I learned all this when I trained as a sports therapist and I’ve also discovered how to treat them.