Shin Splints =(

So the past three weeks I've started running every day. I started out with a simple two miles and have now made my way up to nearly five miles. But this increase in stress on my legs has started causing my legs severe pain. There of course are many explanations for this sudden pain, but the one most likely is that I have shin splints.
Shin Splints are stress related, and caused by the overuse, or excessive use of a muscle. It creates little tears between the bone and muscle and causes a lot of swelling in the area between, leading to pain. They can be caused by an increase in exercise or beginning to exercise that muscle. They are usually caused by running, jumping or other activities that involve the motion of pounding on the ground. The pounding on the ground motion leads to soreness and thus also leads to shin splints or can also lead to stress fracturing or ankle problems.
There is a harsher condition caused the same way as shin splints but happens because of an extend time period of doing the activities that cause shin splints, this condition is called chronic compartment syndrome, or CCS. This occurs when the indistensible anterior compartment of the leg becomes swollen with blood. The swelling is so great that it blocks the transport of blood to the areas around the muscle. This lack of blood then can lead to severe pain and other problems such as the necrosis or the muscles around the shin bones.
Some other causes of shin splints related to running is the fact that some runners over stride, or take to big of steps. This causes the runner to land very heavily on the heel every time there foot strikes the ground, thus this problem of shin splints is very very predominant in military boot camps where the stride is stretched an the march style causes a greater pressure on the heel of the marcher. The marcher first strikes the heel on the ground and pushes of with the ball of there other foot causing the weight to be mainly distributed onto the heel of the foot now landing on the ground. All of the force of the weight plus times the movement of the person and distribution of the weight is transfered through out the leg of the person doing the marching. During the marching time the foot rapidly hits the ground sometimes at the velocity of one hundred and sixty beats per minute, thus marching is an extreme cause of shin splints. Sometime people say that when you get shin splints they are caused by a weakness in the muscles of your legs that attach to the shin, in my case this is definately not the truth.
I am involved in various activities that involve a high risk factor for shin splints. First of all I am a marcher, I march all fall, and then have the problem of accidentally marching during school in the middle of the halls, just a little habit of all of the marchers at our school. Since I mentioned that marching is the number one cause of shin splints, this makes me a high risk factor for splints, but since I haven't had shin splints until this year that is probably not the cause of my shin splints. The second possible reason for my shin splints is the fact that I am in Tae Kwon Do, an activity that involves quite a bit of jumping and the popular cause of shin splints, landing too heavily on the heel of your foot. Since October I have been involved in a rigorous Tae Kwon Do program designed to get me ready for my testing in twenty-seven days. This program and workout schedule involves two hundred bunny hop jumps a day, where I touch my knees to my chest and then land on my feet again, this is a possible cause of my shin splints but all of the pain that I felt during the beginning of me starting out this workout is now gone. But it is still a killer workout for my abs and I have started to develop a six pack, my lifes dream, just kidding. So that probably isn't the problem that is causing my shin splints.
I am coming to believe that it is a combination of all three of these activities is causing enough stress on my legs to cause these shin splints.
There are a number of ways that you can help to relieve the pain of the shin splints but the only two ways to get rid of them are strengthening the muscles to be able to handle a high level of stress, or lots of ice and rest. But I have found temporary relief in double doses of asprin and a miracle massager called the stick, it's a long wooden stick that as a roll of bead attached to it. You roll it over your legs and it massages the muscles, it helps to relax my muscles after a long work out and make it so my legs don't feel like crap in the morning when I get up.
So I guess until my muscles get strong enough I am going to have to survive with relief of pain by asprin.