Healing Tendonitis with Acupuncture: Enjoy a Pain-Free Alaska Summer
Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
By Sy Cloud, MAc, LAc, Natural Health Center
This summer as an acupuncturist at Natural Health Center, I see a lot of patients with tendonitis (inflammation of the tendon) and tenosynovitis (inflammation of the tendon sheath) caused by repetitive motion. After a winter of being cooped up, summer in Alaska creates the perfect environment for active, repetitive movement. Be it swinging a hammer, working in soil, laying tile or raking leaves, any repetitive activity that intensely uses a body part has the potential to cause the wear and tear that promotes an inflammatory response.
Understanding inflammation and the healing process
Unlike muscle tissue, tendons and ligaments have a very limited internal vascular structure and rely on surrounding tissue to continually provide the nutrients to regenerate. When a tendon is strained or torn and needs to rebuild, the vascular system in the surrounding tissue will fill with blood to allow the necessary proteins to “soak” into the tendon, and with time, regenerate to the point the damage is no longer present.
The Chinese medicine approach to tendonitis
As a practitioner of Chinese medicine, I look for factors in a person’s health that might have created the environment for inflammation to appear and inhibit the body’s ability to heal itself. After collecting information about a patient’s habits, activity level, energy level and diet, I listen to their pulse on both the right and left wrist and look at their tongue to garner clues as to why they aren’t able to heal by themselves.
Barriers to healing quickly from tendonitis
I find, with most patients, several factors that contribute to their compromised health and barriers to healing quickly:
● A diet lacking in nutrition or the inability to absorb nutrients from food
● Over exertion
● High levels of sustained stress, including being chronically sleep-deprived
● Repetitive, high exertion movement
● Age
Who suffers from tendonitis?
The people I commonly see in my practice with repetitive movement tendonitis frequently include:
● Newer mothers that haven’t fully recovered from childbirth
● Patients with chronically poor diets that frequently include fast food and soda
● People that don’t habitually warm-up before a high exertion activity
● Patients with chronic high stress and high cortisol levels from either their jobs or personal lives
● People of advanced age
Acupuncture treatment for tendonitis
When a new patient comes in for treatment complaining about pain in and around tendons, I will usually place needles around the areas of discomfort to increase blood flow around the tendons and reduce inflammation in the area to reduce pain. In this case, the pain is the symptom and, in Chinese medicine, likened to the branch of a tree.
Next, I will place needles in other areas of the body to regulate or tonify aspects of the patient to promote a level of health that allows the body to continue to heal on its own. This is considered the root of the tree.
Root causes of tendonitis
As far as root causes of tendonitis and tenosynovitis, the patient’s quality of blood is frequently key in healing the damage and stopping the inflammation. Compromised nutrients in the blood can be caused by poor nutrition or poor absorption in the digestive tract. Poor absorption can have several different causes that include chronic physical and or mental/emotional stress and fatigue.
Diet is also key. Most everyone knows processed food has little nutritional value, but sometimes it’s more complicated. For example, a strict vegan diet may not have the proteins and fats necessary to heal an injury, while a paleo or ketogenic diet may not have the carbohydrates and sugars to provide the energy the patient needs. Each patient is unique and although there are valuable aspects to the popular diets, it’s important to remember that they are not one size fits all.
Improving your health and ability to heal
A practitioner of Chinese medicine can assess a patient’s imbalances, whether stagnation or deficiencies, and provide suggestions to improve their health to heal from injuries. This might include focusing on sleep quality, meditating to reduce stress, reducing or increasing exercise, or nutritional changes, such as adding more olive oil to a vegan diet or carbs to a keto diet.
Address your pain – don’t just accept it
Patients will usually endure symptoms of their condition for several days, if not weeks or months, before seeking help from a medical provider. I will sometimes treat patients that have suffered from tendonitis for years before reaching out for professional help. These years of pain would be unnecessary if they were to consult with a Chinese medicine practitioner to determine shortcomings in their health that prohibit their body from healing.
Consider acupuncture and Chinese medicine
With the long hours of light during the Alaska summer, it’s easy to overdo it while taking advantage of the warmer weather. If you experience tendon pain made worse by use, then consider acupuncture and Chinese medicine as a viable treatment option.
I invite you to learn more about acupuncture and the Chinese medicine approach at Natural Health Center. If you’d like to learn more or schedule an appointment, please contact us.
About Sy Cloud, Anchorage Acupuncturist
Sy Cloud has been an acupuncturist at the Natural Health Center since 2012, where he helps his patients using Five Element acupuncture, dietary recommendations, and herbal medicine. Learn more about Sy or contact us to schedule an appointment.