Using Blood to Heal Injuries

My colleague at work, Don, has been battling Achilles pain for many years, and I know from him how frustrating it is to be deal with an injury that never seems to heal.

One of the problems is that tendons and other white tissue are poorly supplied by blood, and so an injury, once sustained, repairs itself very slowly. And once weakened, the tendon is prone to being re-injured. In other words, even with the proper diagnosis and treatment (and that's a big assumption), the problem can become chronic.

Today's New York Times has an article about a novel treatment for tendon injuries that involves using the athlete's own blood plasma to speed the healing process. the article cautions that the treatment has not been scientifically proven, but preliminary studies have been encouraging and the pace of research is accelerating.

A Promising Treatment for Athletes, in Blood

The article describes the treatment this way:

"Platelet-rich plasma is derived by placing a small amount of the patient’s blood in a filtration system or centrifuge that rotates at high speed, separating red blood cells from the platelets that release proteins and other particles involved in the body’s self-healing process, doctors said. A teaspoon or two of the remaining substance is then injected into the damaged area. The high concentration of platelets — from 3 to 10 times that of normal blood — often catalyzes the growth of new soft-tissue or bone cells. Because the substance is injected where blood would rarely go otherwise, it can deliver the healing instincts of platelets without triggering the clotting response for which platelets are typically known."

The article goes on to say that a double-blind randomized study is currently underway on 54 patients with Achilles tendon injuries.

In the mean time, Don continues his strengthening exercises, his careful warm-ups, his modest runs every other day, and hopes for the best.

Running Injuries That Aren't Running Injuries

I guarantee you that the most frustrating thing for any athlete or any coach is the injury suffered not in training, but in day-to-day existing.

As a coach, I dreaded interactions like these:

"Coach... my knee is really sore today. What should I do?"

"I don't know. When did you first notice the pain?"

"Right before practice, after I banged my knee on the bleachers wrestling with Joey."

Every coach out there has had a conversation like this, and it's just so frustrating. You try to use such good judgment in balancing hard training days with recovery days. You monitor overall mileage, speed work, weight room work by the week, by the month, by the season, by the year. You watch over your athletes like my grandmother used to watch over her vegetable garden, tending the young tomato plants and talking to the green peppers...

But life goes on out there, and athletes do stuff... regular stuff, like wrestle with their friends, skateboard, shoot hoops, go skiing, dare each other to jump over trash cans...or just walk calmly across the living room carpet... and they get hurt.

Somehow, it just doesn't seem fair. If you engage in a physically demanding activity like track and field, at least your injuries should bear some relationship to that activity. It's more honorable to be wounded in battle. But many wounds are inflicted by just going about your business.

I was thinking about this the other day as I considered the fact that Dan just broke his collar bone (downhill skiing), Tyler hurt his calf (xc skiing), David hurt his toe (snow-shoeing?), and Anna stepped on a toothpick. Meanwhile, one friend pulled a rib muscle shoveling snow, another banged his knee after slipping on the ice, and a third smashed his toe into a table leg.

Back in the day, Ankit got a splinter in his knee while riding his bike, Clay ruptured his spleen playing whiffle ball, David banged his knee while bouncing a volleyball on his head, and Sam ran into a fire hydrant while on a training run.

After a while you wonder if the safest place to be is to be churning out the intervals on an indoor track, and taking a chance with the shin splints.

But what are you going to do? You can't live life wrapped in cotton wool, as Bannister famously remarked.

(Speaking of Bannister, John Landy stepped on a flash bulb and cut his foot a couple of days before his "Mile of the Century" with Bannister. He ran anyway... and broke four minutes. I guess the lesson is to deal with what happens to you, even if it seems like God is playing a practical joke at your expense.)

Watch Bannister (who caught a cold) race Landy (who cut his foot):

Vancouver - "Mile of the Century"

In these winter months when hazards are everywhere, just be careful out there... ok? Just be careful.