This video is about how to treat and prevent a common condition called
achilles tendonitis.
Hello, everyone. Dr. Jason West in the West Clinic coming at you with a hundred
and two years of healing. I'm really excited to share with you some
considerations for chronic tendon problems specifically the Achilles
tendon or Achilles tendinitis, it's the largest and strongest tendon in the body,
it's located in the back of the lower leg and it goes down and attaches to the
heel. It's crucial as it helps you to walk and run, raise up on your heels and
it's really important for changing a direction and jumping. While this tendon
is super strong and can withstand immense force, it's surprisingly fragile
and surprisingly vulnerable. Injuries to the Achilles tendon require prompt
treatment with everything possible, we want to avoid aggressive medical intervention
and we want to avoid ruptures. Now Achilles tendinitis may be the first
sign of a weakening tendon because chronic inflammation, it can weaken it
over time and create small tears. Athletes are at higher risk for achilles
tangent injuries, although I've seen a lot of people like they'll jump off the
back of a pickup or they'll jump off the step and bam, they have an Achilles
tendinitis or sometimes the spontaneous Achilles rupture. Now you don't have to
be an accomplished athlete to irritate your Achilles and tendon because if your
foot biomechanics aren't work or other foot biomechanics, when you're not
pronating and supinating, what that means, when you're not having the correct
movement patterns, it can increase the demands, pace upon the timing while
walking and cause problem. Now the symptoms can range from mild pain after
running or exercising and usually that intensifies gradually, sometimes you have
localized pain along the tendon, you can actually feel like little bumps that you
push on them and they hurt and tenderness near the heel bone with pain
usually worse in the morning and a limited range of motion. You can have
swelling and the tendon may become enlarged and develop little nodules
where the tissue is damaged or you have these little tears. Now some ideas to
make it better, the first thing is it's really important to stretch and get
on a strengthening program, changing your ergonomics. It's amazing to me how
many times people have bad footwear. We are on our feet all the time and I would
encourage you to invest in really good footwear. Now let's talk about some
treatments for the injured achilles tendon and usually we start right away
with some rest, some ice compression and I think
that the most important thing that you can do for any type of tendon problem is
two things. One, the mineral manganese I've seen work incredible miracles and
clinical practice because manganese really helps for tendon health. The other
thing is you want to make sure that you have strong bones, in calcium pangamate,
vitamin d3, vitamin k2 iand an acidic stomach which helps to break protein are
really really important. The other thing that's really important is calcium
metabolism so if we break that down, you have to have an absorbable calcium to
put in your stomach and there has to be some acidity in the stomach so you break
down the calcium. Vitamin d3 literally takes calcium out of the stomach and
puts it into the bloodstream. In vitamin F and vitamin K to help to get it into
the bones to activate. Now sometimes doctors don't or people don't recognize
that vitamin F can also be known as bioflavonoids, this comes out of some
really really old literature that I really enjoy reading, the vitamin F gets
the calcium out of the bloodstream, puts it into the bones and then menaquinone,
also known as vitamin K, starts the calcium reactivation. So if you have your
Achilles and it's attaching to the bone and the bone is soft, it'll pull that
bone away and then literally, it's like an avulsion fracture or micro fracture,
it can caused achilles tendonitis. So strengthen the tendon, stretch the tendon,
make sure that the tendon is healthy but also make sure that the bone is healthy.
Now there's some really meet non-surgical, non anti-inflammatory
treatments called regenerative injection therapy where you can actually inject a
vitamin solution into the tendons. There's a treatment called neural
Prolotherapy where you take dextrose 5%, you can feel the little
nodules in the tendon, you can take a little tiny needle inject those nodules.
This is based up on the work of John liftoff, it's amazing amazing work, big
props to him for bringing that to America and also things like
Prolotherapy where you're using a proliferating agent, using oxygen neural
therapy, how you reset the nerves. There's some really neat vitamin injections that
are available. So this is Dr. Jason West talking about achilles tendonitis, not
only how to treat it but some in office treatments and some home therapies.
Remember, manganese, your bioflavonoids, vitamin k2, an asorbable calcium
really helped from a nutritional standpoint, strengthening and stretching
the tendon are vital so that re-injury doesn't occur.
This is Dr. Jason West, we'll see you on the next video.