Tendon Pain? Try loading exercises and Collagen! -Fredrickson Health Solutions

Tendonitis and tendinopathies are some of the most common injuries as we get older.

And if you have been told to just rest and ice your tendinitis pain, you might be wasting your time…

Tendons help us transmit force. They allow our muscles to have connections to our bones, and we wouldn’t be able to run or jump without tendons.Tendons are remarkably strong, and they have one of the highest tensile strengths among our soft tissues. You don’t typically see younger patients develop chronic lateral epicondylitis, achilles tendinopathy, patellar tendinopathy, or bicep tendonitis without an injury. Where most adults can contract these tendon issues very routinely from little to mild activity.Tendinopathy is characterized by a degeneration of the extracellular matrix, with a structural disorganization of the collagen fibers with vascular changes.

Children and growing teens suffer from more growth related issues like severs (heel), or osgood schlater (jumper’s knee). One of my hypotheses for why most middle age people develop: chronic achilles tendonitis, tennis elbow, plantar fasciitis, or bicep tendonitis, is partly due to collagen loss.

The reason I suspect this as studies show we start to lose 1% of our endogenous collagen product per year. This is significant for tendons made up of dense connective collagen tissues or primarily type 1 collagen. So basically, as we age, if we don’t use our tendons like we used to, our tendons start to lose their resilience and elasticity. They can start to get “wonky” or basically deteriorate and become weaker, making us more prone for injury.

If you were to try to rehab an tendon injury like tendonitis, you might hear the word RICE.

While RICE is good for the acute stage of an injury,, if you continue RICE into the subacute phases you will not heal and strengthen your tendon pain effectively without some loading strategies.

Tendons love load. It is how they get nutrients and blood flow. The cells in the tendon are tenocytes, and tenocytes adapt to the load that is placed on them and produce biochemical adaptations.

Even newer studies are showing that if you have some collagen related gene polymorphism, you could be at even further risk for developing pain later on. For more information on the genetic markers, please read my previous blog post here.

Now don’t be alarmed, even if you have one of the gene markers or feel you are at risk for Tendon type issues please keep reading for some practical tips..

Now I am going to give you loading strategies just like any other sports chiropractor, or physical therapist would give you, but i’m going to go a step further to help strengthen your tenocytes at the cellular level.

Please watch and subscribe to my youtube video and channel for more information Click the video below to see an example of bicep tendon loading. Also be sure to subscribe for more videos like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDOuQoSukDE

Picture from Malliaras and colleagues’ 2015 Clinical Commentary in JOSPT (link)

Now what If I told you that you could get better results with your physical therapy if you consumed certain ingredients like Collagen?

Intrigued? Keep reading as not all Collagen supplemnets are created equal…

I spoke earlier about my hunch that most tendon issues are a result of Collagen weakening.. Wouldn’t it make sense to give your body some replenishment so we don’t lose 1% of more of Collagen per year? What if you could also use some other proven ingredients in addition to rehab/physical therapy to have better clinical outcomes?

So a recent study came out on a particular low molecular type 1 collagen raw material called tendoactive. What they found in this study, is that patients who combined both the eccentric physical therapy with Collagen supplement had the best results overall. Please see the below table for more information.

From this study in the table you can conclude that the patients who did both eccentric rehab combined with tendoactive, had the best results!

If you are interested in the product that I am using with TendoActive, ask your doctor about CollaGen from Ortho Molecular Products. It is basically 3 products in one with low molecular weight type 1 and 2 collagen, hyaluronic acid and necessary collagen stimulating co-factors like vit c, and chelated magnesium.

Now of course there is more to it than just one product and exercise routine to heal your pain. If you are tired of guessing while you are in constant pain despite going in and out of physical therapy sessions with limited results. If you are still in pain, maybe it’s time to try a different approach. With my select 1 on 1 appointments, I take time to thoroughly look at your history with a whole body approach, including: dietary deficiencies, movement imbalances, genetics, and overall nutrients and select exercises that could help you finally overcome the dysfunction, all through convenient telehealth.

Let’s set up a free discovery call, to see if we could be a good fit to work together! Send me a email at fredricksonhealthsolutions@gmail.com

If you are not ready for a call, please sign up to my monthly updates on all things pain, injury prevention, and functional medicine. Subscribe button below.

For more studies on tendon pain being healed with Collagen and physical therapy combination please reach out to me!

In good health,