07 Jan Tendonitis/Tendinosis: How Do You Get Better?
You need to first determine the underlying cause of your tendon pain. Is your tendonitis (also called tendinitis) caused by inflammation? If so, then it is the kind of tendinopathy that the healthcare system is best at resolving in short order.
The traditional treatments for inflammatory tendonitis are rest (which can include bracing), ice, and anti-inflammatory medicines, such as ibuprofen. Once these treatments are applied, inflammatory tendonitis should resolve within 6 weeks.
If tendonitis recurs after these treatments stop, or if the condition does not resolve with these tendonitis treatments, then you may have a degenerative tendon disorder, more correctly referred to as tendinosis. In order to resolve a degenerative tendinopathy (also called tendinosis or tendonosis), you must stimulate the affected tendon to heal or regenerate. Since medical science only recently discovered that chronic tendonitis and tendinosis are mainly degenerative in nature, there are only a few treatments that work on stimulating regeneration. Astym® treatment was scientifically developed to stimulate regeneration of soft tissues, and has emerged as the treatment of choice in physical and occupational clinics nationwide to consistently resolve chronic tendonitis and other tendinopathies.
On a different front, physicians recently began injecting platelet rich plasma (PRP) into patients with tendinopathy in an effort to regenerate tendons. Although many had hoped that this approach would prove to be effective in controlled studies, a well designed study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it showed that PRP injections were no more effective than placebo injections. To view a copy of this journal article, click here.
