Treatment of muscle spasms

  The goal of muscle spasm treatment is to relieve the pain or discomfort caused by muscle twitching and also to improve or restore the patient’s motor ability and activities of daily living. Treatment of muscle spasms includes: 1. Relieving the causative factors, some spasms are associated with various external stimuli. Therefore, factors that cause muscle spasms, such as fever, stones, urinary tract infections, pressure sores, pain, constipation, and medications that aggravate muscle spasms, should be eliminated as much as possible before treatment. Usually, muscle spasms will be significantly relieved after the elimination of the causative factors.  2, habitual posture: certain postural habits can reduce muscle spasm. Patients should adopt certain postures that resist spasm during the acute period, which can inhibit the abnormally increased muscle tension. For example, in the acute phase of cerebrovascular accident and cranial injury, lying anti-spasticity posture can reduce muscle spasm. Patients with spinal cord injury can also reduce muscle spasm in the lower extremities by standing on an inclined plank bed.  3, physical therapy (1) cold therapy: soak the spastic limb with ice or ice water for 5~10s, which can produce temporary relaxation of muscle spasm.  (2) Hydrotherapy: water pressure continuous compression and massage of the muscle is beneficial to relieve muscle spasm. The room temperature should be kept at 25 degrees and the water temperature should be around 30 degrees.  (3) Heat conduction: such as heat conduction using wax, mud, sand, etc., radiant heat (infrared) and endogenous heat (ultrashort wave) from heat therapy.  (4) Alternative electrical stimulation therapy for spastic muscles and their antagonist muscles: It involves stimulating spastic muscles and their antagonist muscles with two sets of square waves having the same wave width and frequency, emitting the first and second wave frequencies in sequence to cause alternate muscle contractions. Interactive inhibition and inhibition induced by Golgi muscle tone stimulation are used to resist spasticity.  A moderate increase in vitamin D intake is recommended in life to effectively prevent spasticity, and an increase in calcium intake can also reduce spasticity. These nutrients are mainly from milk, cheese, yogurt, green leafy plants and canned fish.