What causes lower abdominal pain when exercising?

Generally speaking, the time we exercise the most is during school, because besides studying every day, exercise is the only thing we can do at school. However, many people feel pain in their lower abdomen when exercising. Why is this? This may be a muscle strain, but in more cases, it may have a lot to do with one's own condition or disease.

In fact, most people will experience this kind of abdominal pain at the beginning of exercise, which sports medicine calls "abdominal pain during exercise."

Based on the symptoms and causes of abdominal pain, there are generally the following situations.

One type of abdominal pain is caused by the inability of internal organs to temporarily adapt to the needs of strenuous exercise. The pain mostly occurs in the right rib area (liver area) and left rib area (spleen area). These people usually exercise little, have poor myocardial strength, relatively weak cardiopulmonary function, and do not do sufficient warm-up before exercise. When the functions of internal organs are not improved to the expected level of activity, the amount of exercise is increased or the intensity of exercise is too high, which makes the heart overloaded and the pulsation weak, affecting the return of venous blood, causing increased pressure in the inferior vena cava, and obstruction of hepatic venous return, which causes congestion and swelling of the liver and spleen, and the nerves covering their capsules are involved and produce pain. In addition, during strenuous exercise, the original even and rhythmic breathing is disrupted, and the breathing becomes rapid and shallow, which increases the intrathoracic pressure and aggravates the swelling of the liver and spleen. Rapid and shallow breathing causes the respiratory muscles to contract too frequently and become overly tense, resulting in spasms. The blood and oxygen supply to the heart and lungs cannot keep up with the needs of the muscles, resulting in respiratory muscle deprivation, which further aggravates the pain.

The way to prevent this type of pain is to arrange the amount and intensity of exercise reasonably according to your own physical condition and physical strength, proceed step by step, and do it within your ability. Before exercising, you should do sufficient warm-up exercises to put all organs in good exercise condition. During exercise, pay attention to adjusting your breathing and exercise rhythm, and try to breathe through your nose instead of your mouth. After a period of exercise, cardiopulmonary function will quickly improve, and abdominal pain during exercise will naturally decrease or disappear.

Another type of abdominal pain is caused by bad exercise habits, which is mainly caused by gastrointestinal spasm pulling on the nerves. It usually manifests as dull pain or distending pain, and in severe cases it may present as paroxysmal colic. Most of the time, gastric cramps are caused by strenuous exercise too early after a meal (less than 1 hour), eating too much, drinking too much (especially cold drinks), or hunger exercise (stimulation of the stomach by gastric acid or cold air), and the location is mostly in the upper abdomen. If intestinal cramps are caused by parasites in the abdomen (such as roundworms) or by eating a large amount of gas-producing or indigestible food (such as beans, potatoes, beef, etc.) before exercise, the pain will mostly be around the navel. If the intestinal spasm is caused by unexcreted stool, the pain is mostly in the lower left abdomen.

In short, if you find that you always feel lower abdominal pain when exercising, you must pay attention and not ignore this problem. The best thing to do is to seek help from a doctor and find out the cause. By taking appropriate measures to address the cause, you can perfectly solve the problem and your lower abdomen will no longer hurt when exercising.