Chronic pain and tightness. Trouble getting a diagnosis

HenryChinaski

For the last 11 months or so I've been having severe muscle/joint pain and discomfort. It's weird to describe so I should start at the beginning. After years of inactivity dossing about, smoking weed, drinking, eating bad, I moved to Korea and got seriously into the gym about 2 years ago. I quickly built up to a heavy weightlifting routine, doing four to five days a week, and in retrospect probably overdoing it with the time I spent lifting and the lack of variety in my routine but feeling great and loving it.

From the early-ish stages I felt tightness in my back lat muscles and under my arms kind of but it caused no major discomfort and a good stretch usually felt good. Then I ended up slowing down for a few weeks due to Christmas and being busy with work. This was followed by a six week break while I travelled a bit and went home for a little while. When I got back into the gym last March, within a day or two of my first workout my lats were incredible tight and I couldn't stop rolling my shoulders and pulling them forward. It was like I could never relax them.

I went to a chiropractor first and had a scan taken of my back. It was a little locked up but all in all there were no problems found with my spine and it was moving away fine within a couple of sessions. I was given the go ahead to continue working out and I did but with a lighter routine and a lot more stretching. Around last November this pain got much worse and I began feel incredibly tight and tense all over. My shoulders, neck, lats, chest, hips, and all leg muscles were all tight and causing me a lot of discomfort. I had trouble keeping still and kept moving and and trying to stretch them and could never relax. I also developed what I'm pretty sure is restless leg syndrome and had a lot of trouble relaxing my legs at night.

I went to a hospital with my symptoms and they took several x-rays. They said there was a very slight misalignment with my hips where the right hip was slightly higher that the left. They took chest x-rays aswell and ruled out any problems there. They said the problem had to be muscular and prescribed physio therapy and a cocktail of God knows what medication for myofascial muscle pain.

The treatment however seemed useless to me and was no help. They would have me lie on a heat pad for a while, next came some sort of electronic stimulation where they put pads on my back and shoulders which performed a kind of massage, and then there was ultrasound therapy. I also tried acupuncture and massage aswell, and I improved my diet eating more fruit, drinking milk, taking multi-vitamins and magnesium supplements but nothing seemed to work. I kept explaining that there was no improvement and that focusing the physio on such a specific area didn't seem to make sense as the pain was everywhere. I also have chest/stomach contractions from time to time and some eye twitching which gained no extra attention from the doctors. Note that these feel voluntary in that I know I'm going to do them before they happen but still have to do it.

A few weeks ago I lost my health insurance for unrelated reasons but didn't feel like I was getting any benefit from the treatments anyway so I didn't go back to the hospital. Since then the problem has remained the same. I have days that are worse than others and have been continuing to stretch daily.

I have now been stretching regularly for several months and have had absolutely no improvement in the flexibility around any of my joints. My hips, and shoulders are constantly tight, with pain varying from a tingling sensation to red hot pain. I still can't stand still and have to keep shuffling and moving around because I can't relax my muscles. My shoulders sometimes spasm, all my muscles are always tight, I struggle to get to sleep, and my major joints are stuck in a minimal range of motion.

My left side seems to be worse than my right side and when I try to do a lotus position or put my left leg up on my knee, I can barely do it and have to use my hands to get the leg into position. Then the left knee cannot get within a foot of the ground staying about chest level. When I hold a towel and try to stretch my shoulders and I can't keep my arms straight above my head. When I try to stretch triceps I can barely touch the back of my neck and when I stretch my left arm behind my back I can't touch the centre or my spine. Likewise I can't bend my knees back into a full quad stretch and on the left side I can just about get my heel within 6 inches or my butt cheek.

After about 9 months of stretching and trying there has been no noticeable improvement with any of these problems. Yet I'm stuck in Korea with no option to go home and the Korean doctors seem to be no help. I don't know if this is muscle pain or joint pain or what? Is there an explanation for why flexibility is not improving? If I had joint problems like arthritis, would they have showed up on the x-rays that were taken? My whole body feels like an uncomfortable outfit that I can't stop trying to shake off. Can anyone please help me figure out what is wrong with me??