The Gut Check: Nutrition and Gut Health for Recreational Athletes

Research Review: Collagen, Cartilage, and Repairing Tendons with Loading and Nutrition

• Kate Cline, Dietitian and Gut Health Specialist • Episode 18

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Torn tendons? Surgery, no more! At least, that's what science and case studies are starting to look at -- how to get the body to naturally heal and regrow torn tendons! And what may be some of the implication from that, regarding repairing your own cartilage to help with osteoarthritis?

It today's episode, I will review some basics on how collagen works, and the difficulties of getting nutrients in to your tendons without exercise. Then we'll dive into a case study and various research from Dr Keith Baar of UC Davis, professor and researcher with the Functional Molecular Biology Lab. He has many fascinating interviews on various podcasts (links below) and i'll hit some of the key points he's made from all of them in this episode, as well as review a case study from 2019 where they completely healed patellar tendinopathy (damaged tendon over the kneecap, "jumpers knee") in a professional NBA player with just 20 minutes of rehab per week!

Surgery is controversial for knee pain, with many study reviews showing it has almost no benefit to skipping the surgery, and sometimes even sets the knee up for more issues down the road because you've now caused a controlled trauma to the knee. So it's exciting to see research showing the advancements not only in how to heal tendons (and maybe cartilage eventually??) but also how to properly train and feed the tissues to help prevent injury.

SOURCE:

Baar K. Stress Relaxation and Targeted Nutrition to Treat Patellar Tendinopathy. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2019 Jul 1;29(4):453–457. doi: 10.1123/ijsnem.2018-0231. PMID: 30299199.

LINKS:

CONNECT:

Dr Baar: 

  • Twitter @MuscleScience
  • About: https://biology.ucdavis.edu/people/keith-baar 

Kate:

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