The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
My scumbag Achilles.
I feel like we have a very poor model of how tendons work / become injured / heal.
Certainly the bog standard advice that your doctor gives you is completely useless. RICE (rest,ice,compression,elevation) is worthless for athletes suffering from tendonitis. Yes, even the R in RICE is bad. You can rest your achilles for 2 weeks and see zero improvement.
Here's the latest fuck you from my Achilles tendon.
After a couple years of quiet, my Achilles suddenly flared up playing tennis. The next day I am limping badly and despite rest (and eccentric calf lowering) this shit lingers for weeks. I can't really play tennis at all which is bad because I have a tournament coming up and I'm going to be playing several matches in one weekend.
Well, the tournament happened and my Achilles was - mostly fine somehow. I took two ibuprofen each day and I guess that was enough. Despite a huge amount of volume over the weekend, my Achilles is in the same state as it was last week, achy but not debilitating.
I've tried everything. Ice, heat/ice, voodoo flossing, eccentric calf lowers, stretching, rest. Nothing really works to cure the Achilles, although foam rolling the calves seems to help prevent further injury. In the end, my Achilles just suddenly gets worse or better for no reason.
One day, someone will figure out a treatment that actually works for tendonitis.
Yep current medical understanding of injury is terrible, and doctors are way too confident at trying to perform surgeries when they don't know shit. Beware.
I'd say movement and exercise is the key to tendonitis in my experience. To be fair I'm also a big body/mind guy, a la John Sarno. I've dealt with chronic pain for almost ten years so I have been through all sorts of different treatment programs. Ultimately just developing more fine-grained bodily awareness and relaxing with yoga + working on my emotional state have been the only things that helped me.
Agree, and I think everyone should get at least 2 opinions before surgery. But I think things are getting better. A teammate recently tore her ACL. Her doctors are avoiding surgery due to evidence suggesting that surgery doesn't have better outcomes.
A philosophical question about disorder: Who do you take advice from, the person who has lots of problems or the person who never has any? For example, if I have tendonitis, do I talk to the guy who does PT every day and wears 7 braces. Or do I talk to the guy who has never been injured?
Personally, I want to be a healthy person, not a person that overcomes illnesses. So I try to emulate the guy who waltzes through life without a care in the world. But then I get injured and I end up asking the knee brace guy which PT he uses.
Really hard to figure out the correct path, I guess. I do believe mind/body connections are important.
Yep I don’t blame you, chronic pain is weird! I would take the advice of the body builders as well.
I just lurk here in the shadows waiting for people to fall through the cracks of mainstream exercise science, then I pounce!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link