I have arthritis on my left knee. The pain occurs when I walk up stairs. The pain would be more intense as the angle of ascent gets steeper. This is the only part of my body that has pain, and I can attribute it to my fondness of leaping. I thought it would be a way of maintaining my leg dexterity, but it must have caused my knee and its surrounding muscles, ligaments, and tendons to be overused.
So now I have this chronic condition. I looked up arthritis.org, and there is a long list of arthritic conditions. I believe that chronromalacia patella is the condition I am facing. http://www.arthritis.org/about-arthritis/types/chondromalacia-patella/
WhenI take MSM as a supplement, the pain would go away. But it would come back when I stop taking MSM. I wonder why it would have such an immediate effect.
Are the Health Benefits of MSM Related to Sulfur? :
"at least four human clinical trials have been conducted on MSM and its ability to help with exercise recovery, and muscle injuries like delayed onset muscle stiffness or soreness (DOMS) and large muscle injuries like that from a heart attack—all of which is related to oxidative stress and subsequent cellular damage."
MSM contains sulfur, and "Sulfur is just now becoming more widely appreciated as a really critical nutrient, without which many other things don’t work properly, and most people are probably not getting enough sulfur from their diet anymore. For example, sulfur plays a critical role in detoxification, and also in inflammatory conditions. For detoxification, sulfur is part of one of the most important antioxidants that your body produces:glutathione. Without sulfur, glutathione cannot work."
I'm currently taking only 1.5 grams per day, and I'm thinking of gradually increasing it to 6 grams per day, as the article mentions that is the range of intake that is effective.
I have seen a sports therapist before, and I was told to strengthen the surrounding muscles around that knee using bands of rubber that would strengthen those muscles with repetitive exercise. That might have improved my condition, but I wouln't know because it was something I find hard to do on a regular basis.
Long after, I went to see a therapist who practices neuromuscular therapy, which is a therapy that involves massaging muscles that would remove lactic acid that has been trapped in our muscles. The theory behind the therapy is that because of the presence of lactic acid, our muscles could lose communication with the brain, and that the brain would not know that our muscle is in a contracted state, and would keep sending signals to the muscle to contract. The muscle would be in a perpetual state of contraction, and would not be in a relaxed state. My massaging the muscle and releasing the lactic acid trapped in the muscles, the communication of the muscle with the brain would be restored, and the muscle would be in a state of relaxation and stress conditions would be relieved.
Why I mention neuromuscular therapy is because of how it pinpoints lactic acid as a cause of many of the aches we are experiencing. Practitioners tell of how their therapy even dispenses with the need for hip replacements. Having read a lot about lactic acid from Ray Peat's articles, I thought about the implications if our body can minimize the production of lactic acid by making energy production very efficient through oxidative metabolism. This would minimize lactic acid production, as the products of effective metabolism would be carbon dioxide and not lactic acid.
It made me think that maybe my knee pain is not so much a result of my abuse of my knee, but more about my knee being the weakest point in my body (since it has been abused), and that it would be the first to show expressions of degeneration due to my body's inefficient production of energy.
NMT (neuromuscular therapy) and MSM supplementation are merely band-aids to deal with a condition arising from inefficient metabolism and its resulting by-product lactic acid (an assumption I make).
Assuming lactic acid is causing the pain I'm experiencing, and assuming that MSM resolves somehow the problem of lactic acid in the muscles surrounding my left knee, I have this question:
What are possible mechanisms involved that allow MSM to remove the lactic acid on the muscles surrounding my left knee? Does MSM improve somehow the efficiency of metabolism, such as it could signifiantly alter the amount of lactic acid being produced?
In parting, let me quote from the article "We found that they were indeed dose-related, but the interesting thing was it was inversely related. The more MSM you took, the less sulfate was excreted in your urine. What that says is it’s much more complicated than just a strict sulfur donor. It is a compartmentalization of sulfur and sulfur metabolism within the body. That suggests that MSM is actually allowing better metabolism, better incorporation of the sulfur throughout the body. It’s not just a simple sulfur donor...'”
So now I have this chronic condition. I looked up arthritis.org, and there is a long list of arthritic conditions. I believe that chronromalacia patella is the condition I am facing. http://www.arthritis.org/about-arthritis/types/chondromalacia-patella/
WhenI take MSM as a supplement, the pain would go away. But it would come back when I stop taking MSM. I wonder why it would have such an immediate effect.
Are the Health Benefits of MSM Related to Sulfur? :
"at least four human clinical trials have been conducted on MSM and its ability to help with exercise recovery, and muscle injuries like delayed onset muscle stiffness or soreness (DOMS) and large muscle injuries like that from a heart attack—all of which is related to oxidative stress and subsequent cellular damage."
MSM contains sulfur, and "Sulfur is just now becoming more widely appreciated as a really critical nutrient, without which many other things don’t work properly, and most people are probably not getting enough sulfur from their diet anymore. For example, sulfur plays a critical role in detoxification, and also in inflammatory conditions. For detoxification, sulfur is part of one of the most important antioxidants that your body produces:glutathione. Without sulfur, glutathione cannot work."
I'm currently taking only 1.5 grams per day, and I'm thinking of gradually increasing it to 6 grams per day, as the article mentions that is the range of intake that is effective.
I have seen a sports therapist before, and I was told to strengthen the surrounding muscles around that knee using bands of rubber that would strengthen those muscles with repetitive exercise. That might have improved my condition, but I wouln't know because it was something I find hard to do on a regular basis.
Long after, I went to see a therapist who practices neuromuscular therapy, which is a therapy that involves massaging muscles that would remove lactic acid that has been trapped in our muscles. The theory behind the therapy is that because of the presence of lactic acid, our muscles could lose communication with the brain, and that the brain would not know that our muscle is in a contracted state, and would keep sending signals to the muscle to contract. The muscle would be in a perpetual state of contraction, and would not be in a relaxed state. My massaging the muscle and releasing the lactic acid trapped in the muscles, the communication of the muscle with the brain would be restored, and the muscle would be in a state of relaxation and stress conditions would be relieved.
Why I mention neuromuscular therapy is because of how it pinpoints lactic acid as a cause of many of the aches we are experiencing. Practitioners tell of how their therapy even dispenses with the need for hip replacements. Having read a lot about lactic acid from Ray Peat's articles, I thought about the implications if our body can minimize the production of lactic acid by making energy production very efficient through oxidative metabolism. This would minimize lactic acid production, as the products of effective metabolism would be carbon dioxide and not lactic acid.
It made me think that maybe my knee pain is not so much a result of my abuse of my knee, but more about my knee being the weakest point in my body (since it has been abused), and that it would be the first to show expressions of degeneration due to my body's inefficient production of energy.
NMT (neuromuscular therapy) and MSM supplementation are merely band-aids to deal with a condition arising from inefficient metabolism and its resulting by-product lactic acid (an assumption I make).
Assuming lactic acid is causing the pain I'm experiencing, and assuming that MSM resolves somehow the problem of lactic acid in the muscles surrounding my left knee, I have this question:
What are possible mechanisms involved that allow MSM to remove the lactic acid on the muscles surrounding my left knee? Does MSM improve somehow the efficiency of metabolism, such as it could signifiantly alter the amount of lactic acid being produced?
In parting, let me quote from the article "We found that they were indeed dose-related, but the interesting thing was it was inversely related. The more MSM you took, the less sulfate was excreted in your urine. What that says is it’s much more complicated than just a strict sulfur donor. It is a compartmentalization of sulfur and sulfur metabolism within the body. That suggests that MSM is actually allowing better metabolism, better incorporation of the sulfur throughout the body. It’s not just a simple sulfur donor...'”