Key Questions
What are soft tissues?
Why is soft tissue damage hard to repair?
Are there any good solutions?
Topics Covered
Soft Tissue Damage
Current Treatments
Adipose Derived Stem Cells
The Pain Cycle & Training
Extra: The Human Feet
Sapien Fitness Series
Soft Tissue Damage
In this post I will be talking about some of the other important tissues in our body aside from muscle fibers. When our muscles are damaged they can heal pretty rapidly, but this is not the same with cartilage or other connective tissues. This is why joint injuries can put athletes careers to a brutal end.
Things like our meniscus, bursa, labrums, intervertebral disks, and tendons are made up of these different connective tissues.
The main reason why it is hard for our bodies to repair our joints is because they are often avascular regions. This means that the low blood flow in these parts of our body slow our natural repair process.
Another problem with soft tissue repair is that our body can often utilize scarring instead of the full healing process. Tissue repair is a complex process that I will cover more in my inflammation series!
These injuries are also hard to diagnose because of the limited radiology options we have. X-ray & CT scan can only see bones. MRI is good but it still does not have the greatest resolution. Also, there are usually long wait times due to their limited availability/high cost. Ultrasound can work for more surface level tissues but again the resolution is limited, more-so than MRI. However, ultrasound is not as time consuming or expensive to set up.
Current Treatments
Unfortunately, there are no real 100% treatments for connective tissue damage, but this hasn’t stopped people from trying all sorts of things to repair their joints. Some are effective while others may be useless or harmful.
Orthopedic surgery - conventional recommendation w/ low to moderate success rates (long recovery time)
Peptides
Research chemicals: unsure of long term effects, no studies
Debatable effects with uncertain risks
Some emerging exceptions: BPC-157, TB-500, GHK-Cu
(do your own research)
PRP (platelet rich plasma) - moderate success rate & good pain management results (around $600 per injection, 3x treatments recommended = $1,800 per body part)
Crazy stories about bovine tendon replacement-hotel room surgeries
That elusive biological magic bullet for tendinopathy (Tendinopathy Rehabilitation, July 7, 2017)
ADSCs
There is evidence that adipose tissue derived stem cells can be of great benefit for connective tissue damage. It is FDA approved and offered in clinics across America/UK.
Treatments for “Lipogem” can cost upwards of US$3,500 per body part, but the effects are night/day especially for severe injuries/arthritic patients.
Regenerative medicine is a big emerging field and I will talk about it in another post! Stem cells have been in medical news for quite some years now and it is becoming more accessible, to those with the budget.
The Pain Cycle & Training
Another part of the issue with soft tissue damage is that pain works in complex ways. Many people go about their daily lives with many injuries, but they may not feel pain at all. Meanwhile, others may have microtears that cause them burden. Some doctors will recommend inactivity/avoidance as a solution, and while resting would help in severe injuries, this could lead to the vicious pain cycle for many: this is where an initial injury leads to perpetually worse conditions.
With this being said, this cycle can be broken with an adaptative mindset. Many orthopaedic surgeons will tell you to get surgery or your tendons will never recover, but I am here to tell you that this is not the only solution! Proper rehabilitation and physical training can bring your body to new heights despite the medical prognosis.
This YouTuber in particular is famous for having incredibly bad knees before learning how to train his tendons/muscles. He recommends training with regressions(easier versions of exercise) and scaling up to strength over your full range of motion. This functional training leads to incredible stability around your joints resulting in decreased injury and increased flexible strength. One thing to keep in mind is that these kind of results don’t happen overnight. Tendons repair themselves at slower rates than muscles so they take longer to adapt. With this in mind, practice patience if you ever injure your soft tissues.
Extra: The Human Feet
We have incredibly complex feet. Each foot contains over 26 bones packaged together with a network of springy soft tissues.
Nowadays, many companies have moved away from barefoot style movement and use narrow shoes that, over time, shape our feet.
The natural foot has plenty of support and strength given it is trained.
I have recently been trying to convert to more minimalist shoes that will transition my feet to work more in supporting my weight. I think that this will have amazing carryover effects in my fitness and MMA training. Our bodies are a complex kinetic chain and it is only as strong as the weakest link. A brand I would highly recommend is Altra: some shoe models are ultramarathoners’ favourites!
Zero drop (heel to toe height)
Minimal cushioning (foot to ground connection)
Foot-shaped toe box (let your toes spread out and provide grip)