Clearing the Fog of Misinformation in the Treatment of Running Injuries
An hamstring pull is one of the most troublesome and stubborn injuries that runners come across. Running injuries, hamstring problems, ligament problems and Achilles' heel injuries, are typically notoriously difficult to treat. These occur in places in the body that receive little blood supply, and healing is often slow and irregular. The latest developments in ligament healing medicine though, introduce specific approaches that could revolutionize the treatment of stubborn running injuries.
Of all the new lines of treatment for running injuries discovered in recent years, three stand out as particularly promising. The first one involves helping an injured tendon heal by injecting a patient's own blood into the tendon. The next, called the Platelet Rich Plasma method is even more promising; it involves processing a patient's blood to concentrate the most platelets in the smallest volume possible, and then injecting the newly derived platelet rich plasma into the injured area. The third takes a somewhat different approach. This method tries to take advantage of precise muscle movements in helping an injury heal. The muscle movements of interest in this form of healing are called eccentric contractions. This involves attempting to stress a muscle in a direction opposed to the one it tries to naturally contract in.
Orthopedic experts do not exactly agree on which one of these three approaches makes the most sense in the treatment of sports injuries like a tennis elbow, a rotator cuff injury for a swimmer or any other. And in the environment of disagreement and uncertainty that prevails in the method of choice in the treatment of sports injuries, a lot of misinformation and mythology abounds. I learned all of this tending to the running injuries I suffered in my life as a recreational runner. The kind of sports injury my body preferred to keep having was always to the hamstrings. The more I did the rounds at the hospitals, the more I realized that I could probably serve myself better: so difficult is it to find a really grounded doctor who deals with running injuries.
The first thing I realized was that ice packs and anti-inflammatory pills like Ibuprofen and even physician-prescribed injections of cortisone, all assume that the tendon concerned, my hamstrings in my case, are inflamed. They even call it tendinitis or tendon inflammation. Often enough though, as it was with me, the problem with my hamstrings had nothing to do with inflammation at all. My hamstrings were just degenerating with age. And did you ever know that pain in a tendon doesn't really come about because the tendon is injured? Tendons themselves don't hurt; the pain comes when the body tries to heal the area, by laying down new blood vessels.
Considering the importance of the presence of blood in a tendon that is trying to heal, some of the new treatment methods that involve the injection of Platelet Rich Plasma makes a lot of sense. The platelets jumpstart the regeneration process in an injured or torn ligament. There are major new studies being undertaken to completely establish once and for all the effect and the benefits to be had from these blood injection methods. A certain amount of vigorous exercise is also a good thing when you're trying to heal from running injuries that affect tendons. Exercise pumps more blood into the area, and that cannot be a bad thing.