News May 12, If your muscle pain doesn’t respond to over-the-counter medications, then muscle relaxants may be a good treatment option to alleviate your muscle spasms. Peripheral nerves are those that carry electrical signals from the brain to the muscles to control movement and sensory information — like feeling cold or heat — from the body to the brain. Did you find this article helpful? Dosages are designed to allow some overlap to maintain the desired blood concentration of the drug for maximum benefit. Stopping the drugs suddenly can lead to a return of symptoms to an even more painful degree. To reduce your risk of dependency or abuse, use your medication exactly as your doctor prescribes. It’s good to keep in mind that muscle relaxants are just one part of pain control for your back problem.
Muscle relaxants are medicines that block transmission of nerve impulses to the muscles. These medicines are often used during anesthesia but do not usually affect consciousness and do not provide pain relief analgesia. They are given through a vein intravenously. Some general anesthetics also cause some muscle relaxation. But in many cases a second medicine will be used during anesthesia to relax muscle tone throughout your body or to relax specific muscles. For example, a muscle relaxant may be used to relax muscles in the abdomen or chest for surgery in those parts of the body, relax eye muscles in certain kinds of eye surgery, or permit easy movement of joints during bone and joint surgery. Muscle relaxants are also used routinely during the insertion of an endotracheal ET tube to relax the muscles in the neck and throat, which reduces the risk of injury.
Those who took this drug mix were 12 times more likely to die from an opioid-related overdose compared to those who only took opioids. Shows Good Morning America. The trade name is the name by which the drug is marketed by the pharmaceutical company that manufactures it. References: [4] [8] [9] [10]. Highsmith, MD. Your doctor may prescribe a muscle relaxant to ease muscle spasms, reduce pain, and help your muscles move better.