Erase your Achilles pain with the Unpain method.

https://youtu.be/lFgFJG7jR-c

Learn how the Achilles tendon truly can bring down the whole structure with renowned shockwave therapist, Uran Berisha. Today he explains how the Achilles tendon is a unique complex that is also intricately connected to several others. When it is injured, find out how radial and extracorporeal shockwaves work on multiple cellular processes to speed healing and get you pain-free faster. If you have suffered from foot, ankle and/or calf pain that won’t go away, shockwave could be the option that sticks.

Hi, welcome to another episode of the Unpain Clinic Podcast. This is episode number four, and today we are going to talk about the Achilles Tendon. So if you actually think about the origin of the Achilles and how it got its name, it was because in Ancient Greek culture there was a superhuman that nobody could fight but he had a weak spot. And that was his Achilles Tendon. As soon as the tendon was cut he was brought to the ground, he was weak. That’s how you would probably feel if you have Achilles tendon pain or tendonitis. The first couple steps in the morning, when you’re walking or running when you are doing pretty much any activities. If you already have tried other therapies, like physiotherapy, massage, stretching for Achilles Tendonitis, and other forms but are still in pain. It is a stubborn tendon because it is one of the thickest tendons in the body, and it’s in your foot so you pretty much cannot walk if you have pain. So what typically happens with chronic Achilles Tendonitis or Tendinopathies. These are all the fancy names, but I don’t like to use the names of the conditions at Unpain Clinic. We would rather focus more on trying to figure out the cause and if you just listened to the previous episode, episode number three, where we talk about Plantar Fasciitis, the Achilles Tendon is similar to the plantar fascia. Actually, they go together. But now I want to provide more information about Achilles Tendinopathies that are chronic and have been for a minimum of three months. So the first thing that we need to understand is that tendons are the bridges that anchor between a muscle and a bone. So the reason we have tendons wherever we have muscles is because it is helping this muscle to anchor on the bone so that the muscles can actually pull more. The body has designed the tendons do not have good blood circulation because they’re not really designed to get injured. But in the case of injury, it still has the mechanism where it can repair itself. What happens when it can’t? That means there is a dysfunction in the muscle. From my personal experience, I have learned that every time when we are dealing with Tendinopathies or Tendonitis, like inflammation of the tendons of the body, regardless of where they are we first have muscle dysfunction. Because of the muscle dysfunction, it affects the joints. So then it forces you to walk, function, exercise differently. Now, this tendon is not functioning properly, those fibres are getting overworked and the body is sensing more mechanical forces impacting the tendon. Those cells are thinking they need to make the tendon even stronger because they are getting more load. And then the tendon starts thickening up and loses its elasticity. Then it starts hurting, it even blocks the fluid flow inside the tendon. There’s actually fluid even inside the tendon, at a microscopic level every tissue in the body, every muscle fibre, every tendon fibre has facial layers in between those that help them glide against each other. So it’s almost like lubrication of the tendon, so once you’re running that tendon becomes an elastic structure. After about 40 minutes of running it almost becomes your muscle, the muscle starts tightening up because it’s producing more force. Now the tendon starts heating up and becoming more elastic, offering you more elasticity in your body. But when it gets injured it loses that ability and therefore started hurting after you have stopped running. Because when you’re running you gave the task to your nervous system to finish the 5K, 10K, 20K, 40Ks. And now your body is going through an adrenaline rush, different types of adrenaline can push you, and therefore you don’t feel the pain. [Your body] is going to start using other things, so it can get you through that. But then, after the activity, you start feeling the Achilles pain and it really hurts that’s when you realize you have a problem. What I have found personally is the dysfunction of the Gluteal muscles, the biggest muscles of your bum/hip area. When these muscles become dysfunctional they don’t produce enough power. When you are running or walking, you are talking shorts steps instead of long strides, or really extending your hip and you are not engaging your gluteal muscles. You are overusing your hamstring muscles which pull on the calve muscles, and then the calve muscles pull on the Achilles Tendon and the Plantar Fascia. So this is the typical chain, so now we have to reset the chain. You can even try this at home, my suggestion is always to start stretching from the intrinsic muscles in your feet, on the bottom of your feet. Focussing the stretches there actually hits multiple reflexology points and relaxes the fascia of the whole leg. Then you can start doing some passive stretching for the Achilles Tendon, the calve muscle and the hamstrings. But I do not recommend stretching the Glute muscles, like the Glute max. If you’re really precise and can isolate the Glute med you can do that. I recommend taking a small fascia ball, tennis ball, or lacrosse ball and putting it a little bit lower than where your hip sits, so if you place your hands on the side of your hips, about 45 degrees. The crest of your hip will mainly hit Glute max, so I don’t want you stretching that much. If you put your hands on your Iliac crest, wherever your fingers end about 45 degrees back. That’s where you can actually stretch and relax and that might help you more. The other type of stretching that you get from the search on YouTube is the eccentric stretching of the Achilles Tendon. So they help revive the aggravating factors of the Achilles Tendon problem. What we do or what we recommend, again, because we specialize in shockwave therapy. We have personal experience with it, and it works amazing for tendon issues pretty much anywhere in the body, especially shockwave for Achilles Tendinopathies. So what we would do is actually start breaking down the scar tissue adhesions that are restricting the gliding of the tendon fibres and then it would literally force the muscle to relax. So when we do the treatment we have to treat everything from the calve muscles, hamstrings, and then treat the plantar fascia, and then focus the whole treatment on the Achilles Tendon. So after it breaks down scar tissues and adhesions, because it’s a mechanical sound wave it actually triggers false injury in that area so it can repair whatever has been injured, and that is the main effect of the shockwave. In this case, it is used to stimulate new blood vessel growth. So we improve the blood circulation to the muscle, especially in the junction where the muscle turns to the tendon. So because of the increase in blood circulation in the area, the muscle gets more oxygenated and the tendons and muscles become more elastic so they can actually start working properly. Then about eight to nine weeks after the third session of shockwave, typically there is the highest amount of stem cell activation in the area where the body can go and start repairing the injured tendon. Shockwave stimulates all the growth factors in the body including collagen. Collagen is a very important element when it comes to tendon repair. I explained this a little bit when I talked about the Plantar Fascia because it’s the same mechanism, but it’s even more important for the Achilles Tendon because the tendon fibres are very solid. They need to be very tiring to support your whole body. All tendons are actually built from collagen material, and those fibres can actually snap or tear. Then there’s microscopic space between the fibres, your nervous system senses this space and thinks “ okay, I have an area in the body where I’m not actually feeding with nutrients, I’m not supplying it with blood” and then you start creating blood vessels to supply that area with blood circulation. But what happens, in reality, is it makes things more complicated, and worse because your tendons need new collagen fibres to be built not new blood vessels. If we needed more blood supply whoever created us or through evolution, we would have that blood supply in the tendon already. The question is why. Why doesn’t it heal? Because we don’t live that natural lifestyle anymore. It’s like if you were living 10, 000 years ago, you didn’t have a computer to sit in front of, you didn’t drive, you didn’t sit for eight or nine hours. If you got injured you got up and walked, you created mechanical forces, you went through the pain, and that helped you rebuild. You had the proper food, sleep, and all the factors that that earth has provided for you to injure yourself and heal yourself. But nowadays because we have changed the situation and we have evolved, even the aggravating factors have evolved. The healing modalities have also evolved. Therefore we as humans have created shockwave, lasers, PRP stem cell techniques, and injections to help recover even faster. We even have supplements, like collagen which help your body to rebuild those tendons faster.