5 Game Changers You Must Know About Your Achilles Tendon Health

Achilles Tendon Healing Guide

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www.drhughwegwerth.com//post/5-game-changing-bio-hacks-to-relieve-achilles-tendon-pain

Welcome to our episode, "5 Key Steps to Heal Your Achilles Tendon"!
Hosted by Doctor Who, today’s podcast is packed with practical tips for anyone dealing with Achilles tendon injuries. Whether you’ve suffered from antibiotic damage or have chronic sprains, this episode is for you.

What you'll learn:

• The Achilles tendon is the thickest tendon in your body, but it’s prone to injury due to poor blood flow.
• Why some areas of the Achilles tendon have "poor vascularity" and what that means for your healing.
• How blood work is essential for understanding the state of your Achilles tendon and overall health.
• Learn about the carnivore-ish diet and why it’s key to reducing inflammation and speeding up recovery.
• Proprioception and how exercises can improve communication between your brain and your Achilles tendon for better balance and healing.

Key healing strategies:

• Blood Work: Start with comprehensive blood tests to identify any metabolic issues affecting tendon recovery.
• Diet: Try the carnivore-ish diet to reduce inflammation and support tendon healing with nutrient-rich foods.
• Exercise: Movement is crucial! Doctor Who explains simple exercises to increase blood flow to the tendon.
• Magnesium IV Drip: Learn how magnesium and trace minerals play a vital role in repairing tendon damage.

Listen now for a comprehensive guide to managing and healing your Achilles tendon effectively!

Transcript

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Hey, community, this is Doctor Who, and today we're going to be talking about five game changers that could affect your Achilles tendon. Whether you have antibiotic damage such as fluoroquinolones. And it's attacked your Achilles tendon if you have chronic sprains or strains, this is the webinar for you. Now, if you're out there in cyber world and you are listening to this, I highly suggest you come over to my website and you look at the actual pictures, because there's going to be a lot of great pictures somewhere around here. If you're listening to it, there's going to be a link on where you can go to my website. So you can see right here. This is the Achilles tendon. In fact, the Achilles tendon is the thickest tendon in your entire body. I like to give people a lot of great graphics here. So you can see here. Here's some other great graphics on the Achilles tendon. And you can see some of your calf muscles are some of the strongest muscles in your body. Now one of the things is when we talk about the Achilles tendon is the Achilles tendon is really susceptible to damage. In fact out of all the tendons in your body, the Achilles tendon is, the fact is, in fact, the most, uh, tendon, the most tendon that's susceptible to damage when it comes to your body. Now, one of the reasons why the Achilles tendon is so prone to injury is because of the blood flow. Now, right down in here, where the circle is, right here, this area right here is a area in the Achilles tendon that does not have a lot of blood flow. So this is why the injuries are generally occurring in the Achilles tendon right here is because poor blood flow in fact here they have a basically a saying it's the zone of hypo vascularity. Now what you're looking at is this is the back of your leg. So this is the bottom of your foot right here and here. Right here is the keeley's tendon. And basically there are two arteries that give it blood flow which is called the peroneal artery. And then the posterior posterior posterior tibial artery. So at the end of the day, your Achilles tendon has very, very poor blood flow. And in particular right here. And there's a high probability if you're watching this video and you have Achilles tendon pain, this is where your pain is actually at. Now just to give you kind of a reference point here. So here's the reference point. So this is right here what you're looking at right here. You are actually looking at the vascular of your brain. So your brain is loaded with arteries to supply the brain. Now let's take a let's take a little different look at this. And right here we have the basically the Achilles tendon. And there's only two arteries the peroneal artery and then the posterior tibial artery that supply the Achilles tendon. This is why the basically the Achilles tendon is so damaged so often is here. There's the two arteries. And then I just kind of want to read this section right here to too. And it's basically saying the tenant has generally has poor blood supply throughout the length and is measured by the number of vessels per cross section. So what the heck does that mean? So they've taken the tenant. They've sliced it like in half, and there's very few arteries going to the tendon. In addition a relatively a relative region of hypo vascularity. Right. So less vascular infiltration to that area exists in the mid section, which is usually where the damage happens. So right in here this is where you do not have a lot of good vascularity. And this is where the damage actually really starts to occur. Here's another uh, just research fact here. It says uh tendons. So this is this is critical tendons in general. Right. So tendons in general have poor vascular infiltration. None of the tenants are like the brain. All tendons in your body have very poor vascularity to them. Now, one of the things this also says is how basically the tenants get nutrients is by synovial fluid. So in other words, it needs to actually move to lubricate itself. So like the brain where you have tons of blood flow going into your brain brain, that's not how the tendons work. Tendons are basically things that slide across like these membranes. Right. So the synovial fluid which is in the membrane. So if your tendons are not moving, you're not going to be healing because you're not going to be getting the nutrition through that kind of motion or what they call here diffusion. Right. So diffusion right here. This is a word that just means that it crosses across a barrier. Now I would describe diffusion as this. And this is what happens in your tendons. Now let's just take an analogy of your brain again. Your brain has direct blood flow to all your brain tissue. How tendons get nutrients is by a sponge by squeezing the sponge. So you take the sponge, you put it in water, you squeeze it and it absorbs the water. This is how the tendons get nutrients. And this mechanism is through motion. So with your brain you don't actually have to move your muscles. You don't really need to move because the blood flow is going directly into those muscles. The tendons are completely different. They need to move. And we talked about how the Achilles tendon right at the bottom part has poor vascularity to those tissues. Now, when it comes to the management, how can we do the management, the the pyramid of healing and management? Now the very first thing, which I believe is the most important thing, because we're talking about the five critical things. The first layer is what's your metabolic health? Well, what the heck does that mean? First of all, you need to start with blood work. If you have Achilles tendon and you've not had a good set of blood work. This right here, the blood work is the foundation, right? It's the foundation. You can't jump. You can't jump up here to the top, right here. So this would be, in my viewpoint, very poor, poor management. You have Achilles tendon. And then you go up here to these kind of therapies up in here. What would be those therapies. Those would be like stem cell therapy or PRP. This is at the very tip. Do those therapies work? Of course they work. But you want to get the fundamental basic principles in first before you're going to be doing any what I call this, this the shiny silver coin, very expensive therapy. So you want to work from the bottom and then go up. Now in my viewpoint, blood work is very, very critical. So when clients come to me, I usually run anywhere between nine, 10 or 11 vials of blood. Now I'm kind of kind of go over this. So this is what I run. I want you to understand some of the basic concepts here when it comes to tendons. And if any of these the blood work is not in quote a functional range. This is not good. So for example, let's just start from the top. How is your thyroid. You want to make sure that you have proper thyroid function. Now when you're going to check thyroid it's just not a simple one marker like tsa tsh you need you need to check about eight markers to see how your thyroid is doing. Because if you have poor thyroid, guess what? You're going to have slow metabolic activity. We want to check your hemoglobin A-1c, which is a 90 day marker for blood sugar. We do not want this to be elevated. The sweet spot is between five is between 5 and 5.2. Now when someone comes to me and they've had Achilles tendon problems, I'm always, always finding things on bloodwork. So this is the fundamental principle, basic things. Now if your blood work, let's get back to this pyramid right here. So here we are at this period. Now let's say you kind of do this these what I call the B, the expensive coin therapy. So you do stem cell or you do some kind of PRP or some kind of fancy treatment, but yet all your blood work is not in properly the foundation hasn't been there. Your therapy that you've spent tens of thousands of dollars on is not going to settle in. And these are the things. Why now if you have abnormal blood sugar, if you have low vitamin D status or vitamin B12 status, this is a problem. Inflammation. I check about 5 or 6 different markers for inflammation. So for example let's say your hemoglobin A-1c which literally costs five bucks. This panel right here cost me around $250. Right. So whatever labs cost me is just what I charge my client. So for example, let's go over just an a-1c, which is if you have diabetes or you know someone that's diabetic, they're going to check their a-1c the sweet spot right here where we want it to be is that's a five right there. 5 to 5.2. Ballpark, right. That's ballpark what we want. Now let's say you're at 5.8. You're at 5.8 right here. Why is this a problem? Because this has you have too much sugar in your blood. And when you have too much sugar in your blood, that causes inflammation. And any inflammation causes your blood to be thicker. This is what I want you to get out of this takeaway and this blood work. Anything that makes your blood thicker decreases the blood flow to that area. Now, when we talk about the Achilles tendon, we're already talking about a tenant that has poor blood flow. So the last thing that you want is any hindrance in the good blood flow to your tendons. So I'm checking about 5 or 6. I would even say more than that. When you look at the broad picture, when you look at all these combined, I'm probably looking at ten different markers for inflammation. So fibrinogen this is the inflammatory marker. If you have uh if you have elevated A1 C greater than 5.2, this tells you that you have some kind of inflammation if you have fasting insulin. So fasting insulin on lab is zero to like 22. That's the range. But we want that to be about five. So if you're sitting at ten you have too much insulin. Too much insulin is like glass shards on the artery on your tendon causing problems. It doesn't give your body the ability to heal and function. What's your magnesium status? Now you see this here RBC we're actually checking magnesium RBC, which is more advanced tests. A lot of people have come to me while they've checked my serum. Magnesium. They said that it's fine. You want to check RBC magnesium. What's your vitamin D status? So, for example, to give you a kind of a reference 30 to 100 is the lab range ballpark. Now we want your vitamin D around around 80 here. So let's say your vitamin D comes at 35 and you go to the conventional system. They're going to tell tell you it's fine. It's not fine. It's not fine for someone that's damaged like yourself. So you want to figure these things out. Here's another inflammatory marker autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis. We want to check and rule out any autoimmune diseases. We check about four different autoimmune diseases on this. Now we also have a marker here called ferritin. So ferritin is a word for iron. Now for example you can have too much iron and you can have not enough iron. Both are major problems. If you don't have enough iron, guess what happens? You're not going to have enough oxygen getting down into the tissue, right? Because what does iron do? Iron delivers oxygen to the tissue. So if you have what I call subclinical anemia. And I find this very common in women. So there's a range here of here's too much iron right. Here's here's the range of iron. Now let's say you're like right in here. So you can't be diagnosed with anemia, but you don't have very robust iron. Now if you don't have robust iron that delivers oxygen to your Achilles tendon. And if you have subclinical iron deficiency. Right. And on top of it, we already have poor blood flow getting to the tendon. So you can see how the blood work is very, very, very critical. Don't spend another dime on supplements. Don't spend another dime on any kind of functional medicine and functional medicine stuff until you've had a good bloodwork pan that someone panel. That's someone that can evaluate and say, yeah, here's what's happening. Complete thyroid. You got to check thyroid. You check antibodies against your thyroid. That's just a fancy word of saying. If you have any autoimmune disease, here's another one CRP and inflammatory marker. This is another autoimmune disease. We're going to check this marker right down here which is called homocysteine. It's cut. It's you know, sliced off right there. But homocysteine is another marker that will cause and decrease good blood flow. Getting to the tendon. At the end of the day, we want to have good blood flow to your tendon. So anything that you can do to increase blood flow is what you're going to want to do. Layer number two. Now when we talk about layers, we're talking about this pyramid. Right. So this is the second layer in that pyramid, which is what kind of diet should you be on? Now I suggest that all my clients do what I call a carnivore ish diet for anywhere between 4 to 8 weeks. Now. You don't have to stay on this diet forever, but basically you want to eat meat and then you want to eat fruit. And there are certain types of fruit that you want to eat. So if you go to my website and you can Google this right here on my website, the dark side of vegetables and this whole blog will come up. But I'm going to give you really, at the end of the day, what this means. You need to be eating protein. Well, how much protein whatever you weigh in pounds. So if you weigh 150 pounds, you should be trying to consume a 150g of protein. And then on top of that, you want to get some carbs from fruit. Now here's the carbs that you want to get or the fruit that you can eat. Now, if you have any kind of problems at all, you want to stay away from fruit. Fruit that has seeds in it where you eat the seeds. So what does that look like? So that would be like strawberries. Uh, when you eat strawberries, those little dots on the strawberry, that's the seed. If you eat, like raspberries and each little droplet of the raspberry, there's a seed. Same thing with blueberries. There's a seed. You want to avoid these things because a lot of people will have sensitivities to the seeds. So the fruit that you want to eat are like apples. Because you can eat the apple without eating a seed. You can eat pear, you can eat peaches. All these things have the big seeds where you can get rid of these things. So you really want to try and clean up your diet as much as possible, and eliminate any foods that may be causing irritation or any kind of increased inflammation. Now, clinically, I've helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people get well. And since I've implemented this carnivore ish diet, my results have gone skyrocketing. Skyrocketing up. Why? Because you're eliminating all the potential food sensitivities that someone may have. Now, I like this graphic here because it really tells you how much nutrition is in meat. So this is a ribeye steak. You can see you get all your B vitamins. You get iron, you get magnesium, you get potassium, you get choline, you get omega three. So at the end of the day, meat is very, very nutritious. Now the next layer number three here is blood sugar. So right here if you want to dive more into this blog right here what I'm talking about, just go to my website, type in there. What is a normal glucose response look like. And then this will pop up. So what I've seen clinically is what you want to do is you want to check your glucose. You want to buy this glucose meter doesn't need to be this one, but just a glucose meter. And you're going to be pricking your finger about 10 to 14 times a day. Now you don't have to do this for like 3 to 5 days. That's it. And you can rule this in or rule this out as an issue. Now, what you should do is we want to have good blood sugars between 85 and 120. Now this is with or without food. So let me say that again. Your blood sugar should be between 85 and 120, with or without food if it's lower. If it's higher when you eat food, this is a problem. High sugar levels causes cause chronic inflammation. And as we know as you know, we're trying to decrease inflammation as much as possible. So you're going to get this meter right here. This is 30 bucks at the time. And you're going to wake up. You're going to prick your finger before you eat. You're going to prick your finger 30 minutes after a meal, 60 minutes after a meal, and two hours after a meal. And then before you go to bed. Now you do this for I like to have clients do it for five days, and in five days you're going to see a pattern. You either have optimal, you either have hypoglycemia or hypoglycemia and hypoglycemia. So a pattern of both you go high and you go low. Or maybe you're just high or maybe you're just low, right? So there's three patterns that can can that can come up. Hypoglycemia. Like generally you're on the low side of optimal sugar. So let's say you're like around 75. So someone would come to me and they're fasting not fasting just just doing this protocol after eating drops like 75. This is a problem. If someone comes to me and it's 140 consistently, that's a problem. The sweet spot is between 85 and 120. Now why is this critical? Because this gives you constant energy for the mitochondria. Because when we talk about tenants, their mitochondria, they're damaged. We want to repair those things. So we we want to make sure that you have a consistent nice energy flow just like fuel in your tank consistently going there. Anything low or anything high is going to cause problems and it's going to hinder your ability to actually heal. All right. The next layer here is movement number four. Now movement is very very critical. Now some clients come to me. They can't move. They're literally sitting in a bed, laying in a bed. They're bed bound, right? They can't get out of bed. So we have to start moving you somehow, right? So there's no supplement that's greater than the power of exercise. So I have this key machine that I have the key machine I recommend people do this key machine. So this key machine right here c h I. All right. So you basically you see how your legs sit in this machine right here and it goes back and forth. Now some people will say my Achilles tendon is so painful. I'm not sure if I can handle that. Then you have to do some workarounds. You can put a towel right in here. You can do one leg at a time, but you have to do some kind of exercise to get your legs moving. Because when you get your legs moving like this, this key machine, just like a fish's tail, it moves back and forth. For every minute that you're on this key machine, your legs move back 144 times And that's going to put good blood flow, good oxygenation deep into the tissues, deep into your tendons. And if you recall the tendons do not have good blood flow. So exercise we have to do some kind of exercise. We have to get blood flow deep into the tendon is very very critical. Now if you can I tell people is, you know get on a stationary bike. This here you can pick this up on Marketplace on Facebook. A stationary bike for $75. If you can only get on there and do one minute, one minute is better than no minutes. So any kind of exercise is very, very critical. Now the next thing that I suggest people do is they need to do some exercises with your brain and how your brain communicates. So you can see right here this would be your, your, your, your feet right down in here. And you can see this green kind of line right there. That's the neurology to your brain. So when people have Achilles tendon damage. What's happened in that tendon is that tendon isn't communicating with your brain very well, and your brain's not communicating to that tendon very well. Well, what does this matter? Because the communication between your brain. Right, which is right up in here and your tendon, that will give you stability. So if it's been damaged, that communication channel between these two has been broken. It's been hindered. It's not as efficient. So there's things that we can do to rehab this communication between your brain and your Achilles tendon. The fancy word is called proprioception. What does proprioception mean? It just means that if this is the bottom of your feet, the bottom of your feet are communicating with your brain where your feet are at. Now, if you have tendon damage, their Achilles tendon, that communication is hindered. So there's a couple gradients okay. So you can just stand so you can see this person right here. They're standing on some kind of foam. Now, before you get to that, let me do the very simple gradient. The first thing is just standing in place. Just. Just like this fellow right here with your eyes open. Just stand just on the ground with your bare feet. Just stand with your eyes open, okay? Can you do that? Or if you can, that's great. Right now, if you can do that, that tells us that the Achilles tendon is communicating with your brain. Now, you don't want to be moving side to side. You don't want to be falling over if you are. This is telling you that you have poor communication between your Achilles tendon and your brain. And I find a lot of clients have this poor pathway. So we got to rehab this up. So the things that we just talked about, especially with the diet and decreasing your inflammation, these things are a must. Because if you're inflamed, that's going to hinder your body's ability to see your Achilles tendon with your brain and your brain to see your Achilles tendon. First thing, just stand. Just stand there with with no shoes on. And can you balance without falling over? Okay, if you can. That's awesome. Next thing is here is you see his eyes here? His eyes are closed. Close your eyes. Can you stand still without falling over? Now, this is, uh. This puts more strain on your Achilles tendon and your brain. Why is that? Because when you take out your visual, your visual fields, then what this does is this causes the receptors in your feet to work harder because your eyes can't see. When you can see things, you can balance better. When you take out your eyes. This is putting more demand on those receptors in your bottom of your feet called proprioception. It puts more demand on there. So if it puts more demand in there, that causes that neurology to work harder. And if you start, if you're unbalanced initially and you can train this and you can become more stable, it's like if you go to the gym and you start exercising, maybe you start lifting weights and you started at 10 pounds and then two months later you're at 20. The same thing can happen with your brain and the communication between your brain and your Achilles tendon. Then there's a few gradients here. Now once you start to heal up, you can do what they call tandem standing. You see how this person's foot is right here or feet are there, lined up. Now, if you've ever seen anyone get like a DWI test, this is what they do. They do tandem standing. So you do tandem standing, eyes open with your arms out like this. And again when you're doing tandem standing what happens? That's putting more demand on the communication between your brain and your Achilles tendon. And that's going to increase that pathway. When I say increase the pathway it's going to increase that neurology and you're going to get that stronger. That tendon has been damaged. Now when that's when that tendon has been damaged the communication the pathway the road has construction on it. The road has that that neurology pathway has road construction on it so it takes longer, but the more you train it, the better you're going to be, the better you're going to get balanced, the more stable you are going to be. And then in here you can see there's another gradient, eyes closed. And then she has one foot down and one foot up. So when it comes to the exercise pathway I've kind of done this in gradients right here. If you can't walk, if you have a hard time walking, get a key machine right. This is the easiest thing to do. You can get a used one on marketplace for about $70. Now if you aren't exercising and you're able to walk and but you can't get out of your house, have someone bring you an exercise bike. Get it. Get one on marketplace, buy one on Amazon and start doing one minute, two minutes as much as you can. Again, there's no replacement for there's no supplements that that's better than exercise. And then you can start doing these gradients here where you have your eyes closed. But first start just with your eyes open eyes closed. Right. And then we're training this green pathway here. And then these are some other gradients where you do tandem standing right there with your feet. And then here eyes closed with one leg up. Now the fifth layer here. Now when we talk about all these different things for Achilles tendon, there's literally probably 20 things that you can do. I've only talking about five things right here. Now the next thing is what we call the magnesium IV drip. Now again if you go to my website and you just put this into into the search engine right there, you'll find it, right. Okay. This is what I mean. So this is my website right here, doctor Hugh Wedgeworth, you can see right here, Doctor Hugh Wedgeworth so you go up here and you put I've, I've, I've magnesium. Right. Here we go IV and then you can see right here IV magnesium right in here. Right. So this is where these blogs will come up. If you just put sugar in here you want to try and get down your sugar levels. I have a whole bunch of different blogs on sugar. You can see the sugar in here, right? So a bunch of different stuff on sugar here. So anyway, this is this is a resource. And I've spent thousands and thousands of hours developing this resource. So it's very easy. So you can access it very easy. Okay. So this is the magnesium IV drip. So let me explain what this is. You're going to buy magnesium. You're going to buy magnesium powder because you want to sip this. So your magnesium magnesium powder. And then you're going to get this is a 64 ounce stainless steel container. So you're going to put one scoop of magnesium in there. And then this right here. This is in my opinion the best salt with minerals right. So this is sea salt with minerals. So we want magnesium. Magnesium is needed in over 400 enzymatic reactions in your body. It's needed for tendon repair. The research shows that 60% of Americans are deficient in magnesium. And if you've been damaged in any way by any antibiotics or you've had a strain or a sprain on your tendons. This is going to cause this to be a weak area, and you're going to be deficient in magnesium with 100% certainty. So I put a scoop here in the morning, and then I might put one half teaspoon in the morning. And then you're going to sip this. You're going to sip this concoction for the morning. And then in the afternoon you're going to do the same thing. So you're going to do one scoop and one teaspoon right of this in the morning, one scoop and one teaspoon in the afternoon. And then you're going to sip this. Now this is called Baja uh Baja gold. And this is the best salt in my opinion. Now I want to just kind of give you a reference point. So this is the brand right here. So this is Baja Gold and you can see this ratio right here. You can see this is the sodium 77%. So 77% of this product is salt. The remaining balance of that which is basically 23% is trace minerals. So this is where we're getting the trace minerals. So what are trace minerals. Trace minerals are like selenium iodine. All these things are needed for reactions to occur in your body. Now if we just look at iodized salt right. Just like normal salt you can see it's 99% salt there. There's no trace minerals. This is why this is so critical is because you're getting salt and trace minerals. So I take this every morning I drink a glass of water. I put like a half teaspoon in there, uh, in there and mix it up. And then I drink it. So this is very, very critical for your tendons for energy production, for ATP production. And these are the five key things. So there's many, many more things that you can do. But at the end of the day uh bloodwork is important. Diet's important. Exercise is important. The IV mixture is important. All these things are critical to heal your Achilles tendon. If you have any questions, just reach out to me. And remember is where there's help. There's hope Take care. This is Doctor Who.