Why do I keep getting tendonitis?

[Ane]

Replies in bold:

Many thanks @Zoltanman No worries! @Ane

If I understand well, liver uses proteins to make transports for everything the body doesn't need (I read to Peat that liver needs protein, but I didn't know this). I suppose the aminoacids the liver needs most are those found in collagen. Proteins of all sorts help detox, as they break down to slightly different amino acids used to exctrete rubbish and rebuild our systems. It's not just collagen, but often collagen is easily depleted due to glycine in it being so needed.

The protein needs is so difficult to stablish for me, because there is a lot of contradictory numbers out there (0.8-2 grans oer kg), even it seems Peat now says
less protein is needed as you age! (I read that in this forum) Yes, he did say that, but protein needs when you are healthy old is different from being the same age and needing desperately to detox a lot of rubbish. I'm not an expert, just a woman reading.

I didn't know sulphur was used for both, maintaining tissue and liver "detox". I understand what you say about not comparing with old data based on other dirt, I just wanted to point to the fact that now I'm not eating sulphur rich foos, and that maybe I could try to eat more of those. For instance, I eat very few eggs per month now, and I have just find out that they are very rich in sulphur. Upping eggs sounds like a good move, to assess effects.

2 weeks for finding out if this is the problem is very doable for me, I will try it in October (I'm moving home this month) and I will try to eat more sulphur at the same time, at see what happens. The good thing with collagen is that is very easy to take it, eating high protein foods is more difficult for me. I usually dissolve it in milk with coffee or cocoa, I suppose that there 8s no problem to dissolve all the 80 gr in one big cup and keep it in the fridge, and just sip it through the day. This is an excellent idea, and I've recommended this sip it technique to many people

I do prawn head stock too, which I use for cooking rice, I do the same with lamb neck bones. Yum!

Someones in the forum have told me that B vitamins could be something I'm missing in relation with my psoriasis and diet change (higher carb). I eat very very little liver, (dried liver in caps is 100x better than no liver. Well worth doing) so Bs and retinol could be low. Georgi's Energin is EXCELLENT!! I'm using big amounts of coconut oil on wet skin and it helps, just in case it can help you too. Thanks, yes, I've found this helpful too

@yerrag many thanks. It really seems difficult to know if there is an efficient metabolism or inefficient. In any case nutirient density seems key. Which isn't easy either, I'm trying to find out how to eat all the nutrients with no supplement and a lot of must be eaten! Supplements can easily make the difference when we are stuck, the key is the right ones for what we personally are missing.

I see myself in the trip from one extreme to other: cystine/or whatever is bad/good so you eat just this or that to avoid the "bad"
things (carbs, amynoacids etc), or things like is it really bad to eat mushrooms not boiled for hours? Some things will hurt you badly, while others have no issues with them. It's a learning curve for how your body 'machine' operates. As you heal, you will get less reactive and be able to re-introduce more things that caused issues before.

I read papers on these topics, Peat included
or podcast transcripts (I can navigate through written English, but not so much through spoken one). Contradictory information is usual (like serotonin, carb intake, fat intake...). And trusting one's body is something to re-learnt. It took too much time to see that low carbing wasn't doing me any good, for example. Then there are things like you don't know if they are taste and subjective things or something meaningful, for instance, I forced myself to eat eggs while low carbing because "they are good", I have been eaten very few after, but they are more appealing to me if I drink orange juice with them or cook them as a Spanish omelette (with potatoes), or things like my body feels good with starch and fat but I put weight on very quickly (and I have a lot to lose).

Do try not to confuse glycogen rich tissue with fat gain. Same for mucin in tissues, or stagnant lymph. putting on a kilo from adding enough carbohydates can sometimes mean you have just replenished glycogen stores! An anti thyroid meal can increase lymph clogging and water retention so that you feel 3 kilos heavier... an inflamed gut that has 10x too much serotonin in it can thicken and redden till it's 3x it's start weight. These things can discourage ANYONE if they haven't got the cause worked out.

Keep us posted @ironfist , also @parallax has reminded me that movement is a needed ingredient when you want to drive collagen rich blood to tissues for healing... there's no substitute for movement. How much better the injuries get when we gently let the body know they're needing attention and have the healing doses flowing past in the blood supply.

thanks a lot @Zoltanman

Regarding proteins, is there a minimum and a maximum per body weight? Including the quantity needed for healing. Collagen in milk is so easy to take for me, but I know it has no nutrients (just the aminoacids) and that other proteins must be eaten.

I have tried lots of liver recipes including pate, but I have not found one that makes a portion of 100 gr edible for me (lot onions, lis of peeled peppers, homemade fries, marmalade, or lot of fat in pate...). I have thought about eating 25 gr 4 days a week, instead of 100 one day, and see if I can stand it.

So difficult to know if I have excess weight because of other causes, but excess fat is for sure. Regardind starch being fattening, I think it makes me pile up weight, much easier than sugar, like potatoes/rice/bread make you fat, chocolate doesn't, (but this is totally a subjective thing, maybe just in my mind).

What I'm doing now are Controlled Articular Rotations, after reading about Kinstretch
I'm trying to add what they call Pails and Rails, but there is not kinstretch gyms/coaches where I live. I was following my physio's advice doing elastic bands exercises, but the pain in my arm was groing, she said it was normal, but one day I just thought, well it can't be normal, and I started doing CARs, pain free. I chosed kinstretch because it is supposed to be a way to tell your body "more tissue is needed at this articulation or at these soft tissues points".

 

[Zoltanman]

thanks a lot @Zoltanman

Regarding proteins, is there a minimum and a maximum per body weight? Including the quantity needed for healing. Collagen in milk is so easy to take for me, but I know it has no nutrients (just the aminoacids) and that other proteins must be eaten.

I have tried lots of liver recipes including pate, but I have not found one that makes a portion of 100 gr edible for me (lot onions, lis of peeled peppers, homemade fries, marmalade, or lot of fat in pate...). I have thought about eating 25 gr 4 days a week, instead of 100 one day, and see if I can stand it.

So difficult to know if I have excess weight because of other causes, but excess fat is for sure. Regardind starch being fattening, I think it makes me pile up weight, much easier than sugar, like potatoes/rice/bread make you fat, chocolate doesn't, (but this is totally a subjective thing, maybe just in my mind).

What I'm doing now are Controlled Articular Rotations, after reading about Kinstretch
I'm trying to add what they call Pails and Rails, but there is not kinstretch gyms/coaches where I live. I was following my physio's advice doing elastic bands exercises, but the pain in my arm was groing, she said it was normal, but one day I just thought, well it can't be normal, and I started doing CARs, pain free. I chosed kinstretch because it is supposed to be a way to tell your body "more tissue is needed at this articulation or at these soft tissues points".

This issue with liver is why I use dried in caps. 7-8 capsules of liver powder with breakfast and I'm much better off than trying to eat a weekly liver dose I often forget about.

I don't know enough about protein to make any statements sorry, I just know most of us under eat it... not having enough digestive acid makes all protein feel like too much effort (because it is, then) so maybe try a stomach acid supplement with your chicken or beef, see if it helps the breakdown of it?

I have gotten a MUCH better range of motion increasing as my thyroid got healthier. Less tension everywhere and more ability to relax muscles on command.

hope this helps!

 

[Ane]

This issue with liver is why I use dried in caps. 7-8 capsules of liver powder with breakfast and I'm much better off than trying to eat a weekly liver dose I often forget about.

I don't know enough about protein to make any statements sorry, I just know most of us under eat it... not having enough digestive acid makes all protein feel like too much effort (because it is, then) so maybe try a stomach acid supplement with your chicken or beef, see if it helps the breakdown of it?

I have gotten a MUCH better range of motion increasing as my thyroid got healthier. Less tension everywhere and more ability to relax muscles on command.

hope this helps!

Thanks for your help. So interesting the thyroid - mobility relation.

 

[ironfist]

This issue with liver is why I use dried in caps. 7-8 capsules of liver powder with breakfast and I'm much better off than trying to eat a weekly liver dose I often forget about.

I don't know enough about protein to make any statements sorry, I just know most of us under eat it... not having enough digestive acid makes all protein feel like too much effort (because it is, then) so maybe try a stomach acid supplement with your chicken or beef, see if it helps the breakdown of it?

I have gotten a MUCH better range of motion increasing as my thyroid got healthier. Less tension everywhere and more ability to relax muscles on command.

hope this helps!

I used Ancestral Supplements beef organs supplements with liver, and felt horrible on them. I started low.

 

[ironfist]

I have a history of getting tendonitis when I hang around certain toxic people. This often meant getting tendonitis when on vacation. The emotional angle certainly hold weight for me, but there are biomechanical aspects and probably blood / lymph flow is relevant as well.
Addressing the biomechanical aspect, I have often been able to find a specifc exercise that quickly improves my given tendonitis symptoms. For patellar tendonitis, wall sits. For achilies tendonitis, which has been the most recalcitrant, regular leg massage and relatively heavy, slow calf raises. Bicept tendonitis from overtraining required several weeks of laying off workouts, but high rep elastic band curls, 50-100 reps per set fixed the issue over several weeks, but I am still careful to take short reps with reduced extension whenever I lift heavier in the gym. Bicept tendonitis was a bit of a different beast for me, the consequence of years of enjoying heavy curls like a classic meathead. Now I curl with partial reps like Phil Heath.

In the absence of a specific movement to "cure" a specific tendonitis, in general I find that training and painful area in almost any way that doesn't hurt seems to be the best path forward. For example I have torn rotator cuffs in both shoulders and many overhead pressing movements can be quite painful, but I found lateral raises to be painless, so I stuck with those, just one or two workouts per week, and recovered to 95% after a couple months.

Most recently I had a tryst with peroneal tendonitis, and I was able to get past that by plantar flexion stretching and clearing up some toxic bad attitudes I was haunted by.

edit:
p.s., +1 for gellatin / collagen. A big dose too late keeps me up at night, but I'm up happy and dancing.

With your biceps tendonitis did you have it by the shoulder, or lower on the biceps?

 

[ironfist]

Kinstretch

Haven't heard of this. Googled it.

@Ane

 

[parallax]

With your biceps tendonitis did you have it by the shoulder, or lower on the biceps?

Near the elbow. It was really irritated by heavy weight under full extension. I suspect I began to tear one end or the other of the tendon attachment, but of course my personal speculation with no radiology is... what it is. After one acute overload the pain and inflammation increased to the point that I cound't carry a bag of groceries for a couple weeks. My bicep tendonitis was full blown stupidity, I was basically begging for an injury.

 

[Ane]

Haven't heard of this. Googled it.

@Ane

If you try, let me know your experience, please.

 

[ironfist]

I'm using Neocell collagen, type 1 and 3, beef fed cows.

 

[Zoltanman]

I used Ancestral Supplements beef organs supplements with liver, and felt horrible on them. I started low.

Did the mix include any high zinc organs in it, or just dried liver? With what you said zinc does to you that might be worth checking.

I like pure liver in gelatin caps. I dehydrate from thawed liver, then powder and cap up. I have an 800 cap capping unit so it's easy.

Liver gets cut while partly frozen, (ease of slicing) then laid in dehydrator at 46 degrees Celcius till it dries enough that it snaps easy.

Blast in food processor to powder and cap up. Some also goes in our cat's food, he loves it.

 

[Risingfire]

what are you taking now for supplements?

I think the solution is when you begin feeling twinges, to start eccentric exercises for that joint.

I developed De Quervain's out of the blue a year ago and this fixed it. I have developed some achilles tendon issue on my left and I'm doing those eccentric calf exercises and it's 80% better.
.
How are your waking and daytime temps? The biggest reason for the tendon inflammation you describe is low temps.

Another reason can be fungus. I believe that is why borax works for some....Travis told me he thought so and showed me some studies on it

I concur with @ecstatichamster. Low temps and hypothyroidism being responsible for tendonitis. My shoulder and my elbow hurt for years from baseball. At one point, I thought my shoulder was going to fall off. I started taking thyroid and noticed a huge rebound. Still playing 10 years later

 

[ecstatichamster]

My tendon issue with Achilles is now 95% better with the eccentric exercises and a little olive oil on it, plus some progest-E. But I also take plenty of thyroid to maintain my metabolic rate.

 

[ironfist]

Day 4 or something of taking 20-30g collagen a day.

I'm feeling a bit more full than usual.

My skin is super soft.

It makes me sleepy each time I take it.

Obvious decreased appetite.

I feel weird though. Gonna step back for a day or two.

 

[yerrag]

Replies in bold:

Many thanks @Zoltanman No worries! @Ane

If I understand well, liver uses proteins to make transports for everything the body doesn't need (I read to Peat that liver needs protein, but I didn't know this). I suppose the aminoacids the liver needs most are those found in collagen. Proteins of all sorts help detox, as they break down to slightly different amino acids used to exctrete rubbish and rebuild our systems. It's not just collagen, but often collagen is easily depleted due to glycine in it being so needed.

The protein needs is so difficult to stablish for me, because there is a lot of contradictory numbers out there (0.8-2 grans oer kg), even it seems Peat now says
less protein is needed as you age! (I read that in this forum) Yes, he did say that, but protein needs when you are healthy old is different from being the same age and needing desperately to detox a lot of rubbish. I'm not an expert, just a woman reading.

I didn't know sulphur was used for both, maintaining tissue and liver "detox". I understand what you say about not comparing with old data based on other dirt, I just wanted to point to the fact that now I'm not eating sulphur rich foos, and that maybe I could try to eat more of those. For instance, I eat very few eggs per month now, and I have just find out that they are very rich in sulphur. Upping eggs sounds like a good move, to assess effects.

2 weeks for finding out if this is the problem is very doable for me, I will try it in October (I'm moving home this month) and I will try to eat more sulphur at the same time, at see what happens. The good thing with collagen is that is very easy to take it, eating high protein foods is more difficult for me. I usually dissolve it in milk with coffee or cocoa, I suppose that there 8s no problem to dissolve all the 80 gr in one big cup and keep it in the fridge, and just sip it through the day. This is an excellent idea, and I've recommended this sip it technique to many people

I do prawn head stock too, which I use for cooking rice, I do the same with lamb neck bones. Yum!

Someones in the forum have told me that B vitamins could be something I'm missing in relation with my psoriasis and diet change (higher carb). I eat very very little liver, (dried liver in caps is 100x better than no liver. Well worth doing) so Bs and retinol could be low. Georgi's Energin is EXCELLENT!! I'm using big amounts of coconut oil on wet skin and it helps, just in case it can help you too. Thanks, yes, I've found this helpful too

@yerrag many thanks. It really seems difficult to know if there is an efficient metabolism or inefficient. In any case nutirient density seems key. Which isn't easy either, I'm trying to find out how to eat all the nutrients with no supplement and a lot of must be eaten! Supplements can easily make the difference when we are stuck, the key is the right ones for what we personally are missing.

I see myself in the trip from one extreme to other: cystine/or whatever is bad/good so you eat just this or that to avoid the "bad"
things (carbs, amynoacids etc), or things like is it really bad to eat mushrooms not boiled for hours? Some things will hurt you badly, while others have no issues with them. It's a learning curve for how your body 'machine' operates. As you heal, you will get less reactive and be able to re-introduce more things that caused issues before.

I read papers on these topics, Peat included
or podcast transcripts (I can navigate through written English, but not so much through spoken one). Contradictory information is usual (like serotonin, carb intake, fat intake...). And trusting one's body is something to re-learnt. It took too much time to see that low carbing wasn't doing me any good, for example. Then there are things like you don't know if they are taste and subjective things or something meaningful, for instance, I forced myself to eat eggs while low carbing because "they are good", I have been eaten very few after, but they are more appealing to me if I drink orange juice with them or cook them as a Spanish omelette (with potatoes), or things like my body feels good with starch and fat but I put weight on very quickly (and I have a lot to lose).

Do try not to confuse glycogen rich tissue with fat gain. Same for mucin in tissues, or stagnant lymph. putting on a kilo from adding enough carbohydates can sometimes mean you have just replenished glycogen stores! An anti thyroid meal can increase lymph clogging and water retention so that you feel 3 kilos heavier... an inflamed gut that has 10x too much serotonin in it can thicken and redden till it's 3x it's start weight. These things can discourage ANYONE if they haven't got the cause worked out.

Keep us posted @ironfist , also @parallax has reminded me that movement is a needed ingredient when you want to drive collagen rich blood to tissues for healing... there's no substitute for movement. How much better the injuries get when we gently let the body know they're needing attention and have the healing doses flowing past in the blood supply.

Context is key. As you get to know your body well, which you are getting to, by the way, you understand you are far from the profile of what Ray Peat conceives as typical, or average, or normal.

Ray Peat, for example, considers a typical American to have poor sugar metabolism without saying so. That is my reading of him. He makes no effort to improve the sugar metabolism of his readers by giving them set instructions on how to, as he sees this to be too complex. He would thus be given to give some fixes. He would recommend the use of carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, in order to keep cells acidic, and the ecf basic, in order to improve the metabolism of a metabolically flawed average American.

(I do not blame him for this. His newsletters and books are enough material to use to connect the dots, and one can use them to improve one's sugar metabolism to the point of optimality, but most people are either not willing or able to do that).

So he would keep recommending the use of acetazolamide, a CA inhibitor. But if you have optimal (or good enough) sugar metabolism, you would know you don't need acetazolamide.

That's something to keep in mind when you listen to his interviews. Such interviews are addressed to the typical sickly American or Westerner poisoned by the Talmudist food and medical ecosystem.

On the subject of cysteine, it's also about knowing your context. If you're like me who keeps losing albumin in urine, you should not be avoiding cysteine because albumin has cysteine bonds. We can't blindly follow to the letter Peat's recommendation to minimize on cysteine-rich foods.

There is nuance as we get to understand more our context, and Ray Peat would be in whole agreement with that.

His guidance is a general one, and it is for each of us to customize it to our context.

 

[TheCodez]

Long story short: I had tendonitis in both my elbows for years. Nothing helped. It even made it hard to sleep. Began supplementing with 6mg copper daily and the tendonitis went away within a week and never came back.

 

[Zoltanman]

Context is key. As you get to know your body well, which you are getting to, by the way, you understand you are far from the profile of what Ray Peat conceives as typical, or average, or normal.

Ray Peat, for example, considers a typical American to have poor sugar metabolism without saying so. That is my reading of him. He makes no effort to improve the sugar metabolism of his readers by giving them set instructions on how to, as he sees this to be too complex. He would thus be given to give some fixes. He would recommend the use of carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, in order to keep cells acidic, and the ecf basic, in order to improve the metabolism of a metabolically flawed average American.

(I do not blame him for this. His newsletters and books are enough material to use to connect the dots, and one can use them to improve one's sugar metabolism to the point of optimality, but most people are either not willing or able to do that).

So he would keep recommending the use of acetazolamide, a CA inhibitor. But if you have optimal (or good enough) sugar metabolism, you would know you don't need acetazolamide.

That's something to keep in mind when you listen to his interviews. Such interviews are addressed to the typical sickly American or Westerner poisoned by the Talmudist food and medical ecosystem.

On the subject of cysteine, it's also about knowing your context. If you're like me who keeps losing albumin in urine, you should not be avoiding cysteine because albumin has cysteine bonds. We can't blindly follow to the letter Peat's recommendation to minimize on cysteine-rich foods.

There is nuance as we get to understand more our context, and Ray Peat would be in whole agreement with that.

His guidance is a general one, and it is for each of us to customize it to our context.

Exactly, context is EVERYTHING. Lack of context can blind you, while you trip repeatedly over the solution to your problems!

Customization for the self is the only way forward.

Day 4 or something of taking 20-30g collagen a day.

I'm feeling a bit more full than usual.

My skin is super soft.

It makes me sleepy each time I take it.

Obvious decreased appetite.

I feel weird though. Gonna step back for a day or two.

Maybe you've hit the helpful limit for your current state, stepping back a bit sounds like a good idea. Let things even out and re-assess after a few days of lower intake.

 

[Zoltanman]

Long story short: I had tendonitis in both my elbows for years. Nothing helped. It even made it hard to sleep. Began supplementing with 6mg copper daily and the tendonitis went away within a week and never came back.

What did you think was the mechanism of action for the copper? I'm keen to undestand what it affected, so maybe I can learn to use the benefits elsewhere as well

 

[Zoltanman]

My tendon issue with Achilles is now 95% better with the eccentric exercises and a little olive oil on it, plus some progest-E. But I also take plenty of thyroid to maintain my metabolic rate.

Good to know! What does plenty of thyroid mean, to you? I'm always learning from people re doses and trial and error... I have all 3 idealabs thyroid drops to hand

 

[ecstatichamster]

Good to know! What does plenty of thyroid mean, to you? I'm always learning from people re doses and trial and error... I have all 3 idealabs thyroid drops to hand

using Broda Barnes type protocol to bring temperatures up to normal during the day.

 

[Zoltanman]

using Broda Barnes type protocol to bring temperatures up to normal during the day.

Cool, thanks! will look into it