If you have thyroid disease, you’re more susceptible to aches and pains. Thyroid disease can hurt your cartilage, tendons, muscles, and ligaments, the same way it can hurt your skin and hair.
Have you ever wondered how top athletes are back in the game weeks after a major injury? Many of them use their own blood as medicine. You can use this same trick to get yourself back in your game more quickly.
The procedure is called Platelet Rich Plasma therapy or PRP. Another big study just came out showing that it can work great for some conditions.
The latest study was about shoulders. Specifically rotator cuff issues. The rotator cuff is not a boney socket; it is a series of straps that hold the arm, giving it full range of motion. Rotator cuff tendons are the ones that hold the arm in place. Tendinopathy is the breakdown of tendons.
In the study, serious researchers and conservative medical groups worked with participants who were 35-60 years old, suffering from persistent tendonitis. When tendons are inflamed, they have a difficult time repairing and tightening themselves. This makes tendonitis a tough and exquisitely painful condition to heal. (Another drawback with tendonitis is the pain often seems to decrease before it is stable. This leads to a common pitfall: doing too much too soon and getting re-injured.)
During the study, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) was injected into the participants’ sore tendons. MRI images were taken before and after the treatment.
The researchers witnessed very clear and strong effects: Six months down the road, the tendons were healing and stabilized in the vast majority of participants.
