“Understanding and Managing Muscle Pain: Causes, Risks, and Tips for Healthy Muscle Growth”

I often suffer from muscle soreness the day after exercise. It is caused by microscopic damage to muscle fibers. Our bodies increase muscle volume through the process of tearing and repairing muscle fibers. This means that muscle soreness can be a sign of muscle gain. Of course, if the severity is severe, the story is different. If you feel extreme pain and full body fatigue beyond the level of stiff and throbbing, you can suspect muscle damage and inflammation. If the inflammation persists, it can lead to muscle loss.

If you have more muscle pain than usual, you should check whether the exercise intensity is right for you. If your level of exercise was adequate, internal or external factors may have played a role.

If you have more muscle pain than usual, you should look for factors other than exercise｜Source: Getty Image Bank

More muscle pain than usual… Caused by fatigue and drinking?
Chronic fatigue exacerbates muscle pain. Some people who feel real chronic fatigue feel severe fatigue for more than 24 hours after exercise. Overwork, obesity, constant stress, liver disease, etc. cause fatigue.

Alcohol and muscle pain are also related problems. When you exercise, your muscles produce ‘lactic acid’. Lactic acid, known as a fatigue substance, is decomposed and discharged from the body or recycled in the liver. If this process is not done smoothly, the probability of muscle fatigue and cramps increases. If you drink alcohol before your workout, other functions will be deprioritized until the alcohol is broken down by your liver. This means that the removal of lactic acid is delayed, which can aggravate muscle pain.

Chronic fatigue and drinking are factors that intensify muscle pain and threaten liver health. This is why severe muscle pain should not be neglected.

How to grow healthy muscles?
When I exercise, I often become greedy for weight. You have good willpower, but you must be careful as a weight that does not match your exercise ability can cause muscle damage and even inflammation. If the exercise posture is disturbed by heavy weight, there is a high risk of joint injury. Using a weight that is suitable for you and avoiding excessive repetition is a healthy way to build muscle.

Along with controlling the intensity of exercise, you should also pay attention to liver health. This is because excessive weight and protein diets can strain the liver. High-intensity exercise can increase the production of lactic acid and increase fatigue in the liver, which processes it, and excessive protein intake also increases the amount of ammonia in the body, causing overload in the liver that excretes ammonia. It is recommended to properly maintain the intensity of exercise and consume nutrients evenly.

It is also a way to regularly take nutritional supplements that help maintain good liver health. A typical example is UDCA (ursodeoxycholic acid). UDCA, famous as a liver nutrient ingredient, is a tertiary bile acid that activates metabolic enzymes and increases excretion transporters to help discharge toxins and waste products. It is also a key mechanism of UDCA to protect hepatocytes by removing active oxygen through antioxidant action. In addition, it is good to take vitamins and minerals that help detoxify the liver, such as B vitamins that help improve fatigue, copper, manganese, zinc, and beta-carotene.

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