Muscle Pain in Seniors – Causes and Solutions

Updated April 1, 2021

Health can often be confusing, especially as people age. There are so many signs and symptoms that emerge without any clear cause. Muscle pain in seniors is one such problem. It often isn’t clear whether the issue arises as the natural result of aging, due to a health condition or some other factor.

In this post, we’re taking a look at some of the most common reasons for muscle pain, how you can distinguish between them and what to do.

The single best approach, as always, is to consult your doctor. But, posts like this one can be a way to get a better idea of what to ask and expect before you book an appointment. You might even be able to treat some of these causes yourself.

Causes of Muscle Pain in Seniors

First things first… the muscle pain causes that we’re talking about aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes multiple factors might contribute to your muscle pain. This is true for many health-related symptoms.

Because of this, you may need to make improvements in multiple areas before you start to see less muscle pain. This isn’t all bad though, as many changes could help with your health in other ways too.

Medication

Medications are often crucial for keeping people healthy. They provide many benefits and can even save lives. But, they also come with risks and side effects.

Sometimes these side effects are mild and almost unnoticeable. Other times they are more extreme.

Side effects can be difficult to predict too, as the same side effects don’t show up in everyone. Plus, they’re often linked to the other medications a person is taking, their body, their lifestyle, and other factors.

However, medication side effects are particularly concerning for seniors, as seniors are often taking multiple types of medication. These can interact with one another and may lead to unexpected symptoms.

There’s also the chance that some of the medications are unnecessary. For example, when people change from one doctor to another, the new doctor sometimes continues with old prescriptions, even if they’re not certain what those prescriptions were for.

Medications That Can Cause Muscle Pain

Statins are a particularly common medication that can cause muscle pain (including Lescol, Mevacor, and Zocor). These are given to decrease cholesterol and have been linked to various side effects. Other medications include:

• Asthma medications like albuterol (Ventolin and Proventil) and terbutaline (Brethine).
• Raloxifene (Evista), which is used for osteoporosis treatment.
• Diuretics like furosemide (Lasix) and hydrochlorothiazide (Microzide). These are important for removing fluids.
• The Parkinson’s medication tolcapone (Tasmar).
• Donepezil (Aricept), which is used for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

What You Can Do

Your doctor should be able to provide information about whether any medication may be causing muscle pain. If it is, then you have a few options:

1. There may be an alternative medication you can use that has similar benefits but is less likely to cause muscle pain.
2. You might be able to stop the medication altogether.
3. There could be alternatives to the medication, like natural remedies or lifestyle changes (talk to your doctor about such approaches first!)
4. The doctor might be able to prescribe medication to help with the muscle pain.

It’s also important to manage your medication well. Take your pills when you need to and keep track of the medications you’re taking, along with why you’re taking them. That information is crucial for making sure that you’re (or your senior family member) are only taking the medications that you need.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the most common causes of muscle ache. The ache is the result of lactic acid buildup. Most of us already associate exercise with muscle ache – so the process isn’t normally a surprise.

However, some seniors may experience muscle ache when they didn’t do particularly intense exercise. This can easily happen after a new type of exercise (even if it isn’t intense) or even just moving regularly after not doing so for a while.

Starting new exercises slowly can help. Don’t overdo it. There’s little benefit to pushing yourself too far too fast. Doing so increases the risk for injury.

Muscle Pain in Seniors and Stretching

Muscle pain from exercise is often linked to stretching, straining, and moving muscles in a new way. This is why muscle pain can be most notable if the type of exercise is entirely new or if we push ourselves too far. For example, if you started an intense weights-based workout class and only focused on cardio before, then you can expect significant muscle pain.

However, this pattern applies to non-exercise muscle use too.

Even sitting in the same position for too long or sleeping at a strange angle can lead to muscle pain. Sometimes you mightn’t even be able to work out exactly what caused the pain.

Because of this, the best approach is often simply to wait and see. If the muscle pain was caused by something like how you sit or how you sleep, then it should decrease over time without any issues.

Health Problems

Various health conditions can cause (or contribute to) muscle pain in seniors. The ones highlighted below are the most common examples for seniors. There are other potential conditions too, so it’s important to talk to a doctor and get a diagnosis.

• Polymyalgia rheumatica: This is an inflammatory disorder that results in muscle pain and stiffness. Symptoms are particularly significant in the shoulders. Symptoms can appear suddenly and are most noticeable in the morning. The condition is most common in people 65 or above and is rare in those under 50.
• Diabetes: Muscle pain is one of the many complications that can arise as the result of diabetes.
• Fibromyalgia: This condition leads to chronic pain, typically around pressure points. This can often lead to muscle pain, along with challenges like low energy.

In some cases, like fibromyalgia, there may be no way to prevent symptoms from occurring. Instead, you may need to focus on reducing flare ups and staying healthy. Managing the pain through medication can be helpful too.

Injury

You may experience muscle pain directly due to an injury, especially when the muscle itself was injured.

Injuries don’t need to be dramatic either. Sometimes the event might not seem like much of anything, but you’re still feeling the effects even months later. Even just sleeping at a bad angle or bending over can cause an injury that takes months to heal.

This issue is complicated by the way that pain radiates. For example, pain in a person’s hip can sometimes result in muscle pain in a person’s legs. This can make it hard to pinpoint where your pain is, which influences your ability to work out where it came from.

Injury-Related Muscle Pain

Injuries can also change the way that people move around. This can sometimes mean that they favor one leg over another or clench some muscles without realizing it. Either case can lead to some muscle pain that doesn’t seem directly related to the injury.

Stress

The link between stress and health is often debated and there is a lot that we don’t know. Even so, many people experience more aches and pains in stressful environments. This is especially true for long-term stress.

If nothing else, being highly stressed or run down can mean that you notice the aches and pains in your body much more than you would otherwise. We also know that approaches like mindfulness can even change your experience of pain. After all, pain isn’t solely related to what is happening physically in your body. It’s also linked to perception, attention, and other factors.

Taking steps to decrease stress in your life may significantly help with the pain that you experience. You can also look for ways to target the pain more directly. This book is one example of this approach.

Poor Diet

A poor diet can negatively impact your health in many different ways. This includes increasing the risk of health conditions and obesity. Both areas have negative effects of their own.

You might also be deficient in some vitamins and minerals. Some deficiencies might lead to muscle pain as well. For example, vitamin D and biotin deficiency are both sometimes linked to muscle pain. The effect can also occur with mineral deficiencies, like potassium, magnesium and sodium.

Key Causes of Concern

Muscle pain in seniors is a fairly common problem, so it’s hard to know when you should worry.

The questions below are a good place to start. If you answer yes to any of these, it is best to make an appointment with your doctor.

• Has the pain lasted for two weeks or more?
• Is the pain sharp (as opposed to aching or discomfort)?
• Does the pain limit your ability to do tasks on a daily basis?

Another useful indication is whether you can pinpoint where the muscle ache is. If it is a specific place (or a few places), then it may be the result of exercise or something similar. This is particularly true of the pain gets less over time.

When the pain occurs over a broad area, exercise is a less likely reason, so it may be time to look at other areas.

Reducing Muscle Pain in Seniors

While there are many possible causes of muscle pain – the solutions are often similar. The first step is simply to wait and see if the pain dissipates.

If it doesn’t, approaches like improving your diet, walking more, and being outside more can help. You could also include approaches like Zumba or chair yoga if you want an activity that is a little more unusual.

If you’re open to holistic approaches to pain management, read through our comprehensive review on the latest scientific evidence behind alternative ways to reduce pain in seniors, such a yoga, CBD oil, acupuncture, hydrotherapy and more.

Those approaches all help to improve your health. If the muscle pain persists, then that’s a clear indication that there is something more serious occurring.

And, of course, talking to your doctor is critical.

Doing so helps you to identify underlying causes of the pain and treat these. After all, techniques to reduce pain won’t work well if the underlying cause is still affecting you.

Treating the pain is relevant too, which can include the following approaches:

• Stretches that help to reduce muscle pain, like these.
• Painkillers, including over-the-counter options and those that are prescribed. NSAIDs, like ibuprofen and aspirin, are often recommended, as these help to decrease inflammation. Some research suggests that non-NSAIDs, like Tylenol can help too. Be sure to read about the side effects and risks of the painkillers before relying on them. There are a surprising number of risks, especially for long-term painkiller use.
• Massage.
• Rest.
• A cold pack to help reduce inflammation.
• Applying a heat pad immediately after exercise may reduce the risk of muscle soreness. This is most helpful after exercise, as you know which muscles are likely to be painful.
• Heat rubs and products like Voltaren, which could help to decrease inflammation locally.
• A hot bath with Epson salts. The heat and the salts can both help with pain. Plus, the relaxing nature of the bath can be a fantastic way to de-stress, which is relevant to pain management too.