You may have heard of the terms “Tendinopathy”, “Tendonitis” or even “Tendinosis”. The truth of the matter for a person with tendon pain is that the terminology is irrelevant, the bottom line is that the person in pain wants to get back to doing the things they love and not be in pain whilst doing them.

What are tendons?

Tendons are made of connective tissue known as collagen. They connect a muscle to a bone and their purpose is to transmit force. These forces allow us to move, so tendons play an important role in your body. Therefore, it is essential to optimise your tendon health.

How do I optimise tendon health?

1. Optimise Load: This will be dependent on what state your tendon is in. What your normal activity level is. What your goals are, so what you want to get back to doing or what you want to progress to. These all play an important role in finding the optimal loading zone for your tendons.
2. Recovery: This goes hand in hand with optimal loading. The recovery is just as important as the loading for tendons. You need to ensure that you allow enough relative rest to ensure your tendons can adapt to the demands you are putting on them.
3. Nutrition: Evidence suggests that various nutrients may be useful in improving tendon growth and healing, these are proteins, amino acids (leucine, arginine, glutamine), vitamins C and D, manganese, copper, zinc and phytochemicals. These should ideally be sourced through whole foods. An example of good protein sources would be chicken, beef, fish, beans and tofu. A key nutrient is Vitamin C as it produces collagen, the obvious source for this is oranges. You can also get plenty of Vitamin C from grapefruits, strawberries, kiwi, bell peppers, spinach, broccoli and tomatoes.
4. Hydration: Drinking water through the day will allow you to maintain hydration, this will assist with all key important bodily functions, including vertebral disk hydration. In turn this will reduce the chance of tendons and ligaments becoming stiff.
5. Supplements: When you do not get all the nutrients your body requires from food sources, it is useful to take supplements to top up on the nutrients you are lacking in. Through research it has been demonstrated that oral supplementation of hydrolysed type 1 collagen, arginine L-alpha-chetoglutarate, MSM, and bromelain had a potential beneficial role in tendon healing and lowering the pain in tendons.

If you have tendon pain and need the care, attention and guidance of our excellent physiotherapy team at ALO Physiotherapy Clinic, seize the opportunity to book in for a FREE 15-minute discovery visit. In this complimentary visit you will speak to a physiotherapist about your needs/and or condition/concerns and the physiotherapist will let you know if physio is right for you.

Call us on: 0207 636 8845 to book.