Progress from the outback

[hoodlum]

Thanks bull!

I got in the gym today for chest... on the way there I was thinking okay I can't really use my foot for stability or drive so I'll stay a little lighter but I can do most of my normal routine like bench press and whatnot... when I got to the gym it suddenly hit me things weren't going to be that easy. First of all, even to carry a water bottle in to the gym I needed to use a backpack because I can't hold things in my hands and crutch along so when I got to a bench I looked at the empty bar, then over at the stacked up weights on the rack... and back at the empty bar. It only just dawned on my that I had no way to actually take the weight plates from where they are and load them up on to the bar, what a freaking idiot. Luckily a mate was in the gym and walked straight over, he loaded up the bench, incline bench and sat some dumbbells out in front of a bench so I could do fly's... I had to stop short of where I would normally, I recruit a bit of leg drive even if its just for stability and I couldn't do this so I decided better safe than sorry and racked it before it got dangerous. Did quiet a few more sets than normal on each exercise, bench was still at 100kg and was feeling good so I'm happy. Moved around what I had set up for me plus a couple of machines but really it made me realise just how hard this is going to be

 

[hoodlum]

Okay I saw the surgeon today and it came with some bad news...

I am having surgery tomorrow. I will be in a cast with crutches for 6 weeks and then allowed to begin putting weight on it slowly over the following 4 weeks in a cam boot. It will be six months before the metal he puts in my foot will come out...

More details to come

 

[Bullmuscle7]

Okay I saw the surgeon today and it came with some bad news...

I am having surgery tomorrow. I will be in a cast with crutches for 6 weeks and then allowed to begin putting weight on it slowly over the following 4 weeks in a cam boot. It will be six months before the metal he puts in my foot will come out...

More details to come

Prayers for you brother for a speedy recovery! Do the best you can.
Keep checking in brother.

 

[hoodlum]

Details about injury:

Suffered a Lisfranc Ligament injury while playing sport. At the time believed it was hurt but not this badly, immediately had it strapped up by a physio however it still hurt. Any attempt to put pressure on my foot hurt, could walk with a limp with limited weight through the heel. Over the next 12 hours kept drinking alcohol and pain didn't decrease. The next morning the pain was still intense, decided to visit the hospital and received a non-weight bearing X-ray and that came back there was no broken bones and concluded it was a soft tissue injury. I went to work for 3 days thinking that it was a small tear or bruise. Over those few days, noticed foot swollen, bruised and an increased gap (compared to normal and other foot) between the big toe and the second toe. Finally saw the physio on the third day and while describing my symptoms he said he believed it was a Lisfranc injury, after examination he said he wanted me to get an MRI to confirm the damage but believed it was a classic example of a Lisfranc injury. I got the MRI the next day, the results came back with a "complete rupture of Lisfranc ligament". I immediately had the MRI looked over by an initial surgeon who said surgery was going to be required. I reached out to some surgeons I've known for years and was referred to a well respected surgeon with an interest in sports injuries and a history of publications, ongoing research and both national & international presentations. Ironically he was able to show me a presentation he gives to other surgeons about Lisfranc injuries to give me knowledge on my situation so I thought I was in good hands.

I had an open reduction internal fixation (ORIF) surgery to my foot, this meant the a fairly large cut on the top of my foot roughly 3 inches long and two plates and 5 screws were put in to hold it all together. This is all around the first and second metatarsals as the others were unaffected. Following surgery I was non-weight bearing (unable to walk without crutches) placed in a backslab for two weeks, there was a large amount of swelling for the entirety of these two weeks and every time I was upright the swelling ballooned even more. There was also significant pain and for 6 weeks post surgery I am required to take Clexane (anticoagulant - to stop blood clots) and slowly reduce pain killers as needed. After the two weeks the backslab was taken off and I was given the option of a fiberglass cast or an ultra-supportive cam boot, I chose the boot as I can take it off to sleep/shower. I was told to be non-weight bearing for the next 4 weeks and then come for a review where I may be able to start weight bearing in the cam boot for another 6 weeks and then back in to a normal shoe.

Unfortunately from the date of surgery I only have 15 weeks to recover before I'm on an overseas holiday snowboarding to New Zealand, the trip is already paid and I have 2016 model gear (still unreleased in the US/EU) sitting in my bedroom waiting for the season to start. This means I needed to take a more aggressive approach to recovery, it is recommended that I don't run for 6 months until the metal is removed from my foot (along with two previous screws for my ankle). The doctor also thinks its a bad idea but their opinion is always going to be super cautious at times like this.

I've decided to begin physio before I'm out of my cam boot. Before I am weight bearing I will be doing stretches (due to inability to maneuver properly things are adapted) and seeing a physio for massages and to loosen the muscles that are in my back, glutes and legs. I'm also losing weight, although I was a lean 96kg before the incident, the heavier I am when snowboarding (regardless of muscle or fat) the more force that is going to be amplified through my foot and potential to cause damage. Due to this I'm going to hit the slopes at somewhere around 85kg and then focus on growth when I get back. I wont be able to weight train through my foot (eg: squats/leg press) until after the metal is removed however I am able to do other things.

Part of my aggressive approach to recovery is also the use of peptides. I have never used peptides before and admittedly my knowledge wasn't up to where it needed to be. I went off researching and asked my girlfriend (in the medical profession) to aid with this. 3 weeks later and I've confidently finished my research and have a good understanding of what I am about to do and the effects it will have on my body. Just before I get in to the details that you all want to know, I want to be clear that my research has not come from forums or the general internet (and especially not from the sites selling them), I spent lots of time researching published journal articles and getting the opinions of a few people I trust within sport. All of these articles are in the public domain and I urge others to read them and understand them.

I chose to use Thymosin Beta 4 (TB-500) and BPC-157 and I will be running a log of my progress.

The reasons why I chose to use them are because these seem to have the strongest link to healing in the studies I have read. I understand a lot of other peptides stimulate parts of the body (like IGF-1 is a result of growth hormone put out by the anterior pituitary) however the studies I read show healing effects of natural IGF-1 and not exogenous IGF-1, I'm not saying these studies don't exist and I'm not saying that it doesn't help, the only claim I am making is that I haven't seen it and I have seen the studies which directly relate BPC-157 and TB-500 to healing. I also have an understanding of the healing process (collagen synthesis, etc).

Dosage:
For BPC-157 the dosage in multiple healing based studies (including first two listed below) were done at 10ug/kg however this would end up being too expensive (unfortunately) with Australian prices so I am using 5.68ug/kg - roughly half.
Now for everyone that is used to reading the forums, thats 500mg of BPC-157 equating my bodyweight at 88kg.
To calculate your ideal dosage according to the study do: weight x 0.01 =
This will give you your dosage in mg, the measurement peptides are usually sold in
For TB-500 I found a lot less dosage information for healing so I am using it at 250mcg per day (or 0.25mg)
A 2mg BPC-157 vial will only last me 4 days and a 2mg TB-500 vial will only last me 8 days.
I don't know where all of these 'health clinics' are pulling their dosages from but I can not find a single piece of literature on effects with dosages as low as they recommend. I'm aware the community regularly runs lower than this but until someone answers me why and not parrots information from a forum with no backing, I'll aim to be as close to those studies as practical

Thymosin B4 (TB-500) [Scholar link - http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=thymosin+beta+4]
"The modern approach to wound treatment" - http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/11214479
"Thymosin B4 Accelerates Wound Healing" - http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v113/n3/abs/5603241a.html
"Thymosin

4 sulfoxide is an anti-inflammatory agent generated by monocytes in the presence of glucocorticoids" - http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v5/n12/abs/nm1299_1424.html"Role of Thymosin β[SUB]4[/SUB] in Tumor Metastasis and Angiogenesis" - http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/22/1674.short
"Neurological functional recovery after thymosin beta4 treatment in mice with experimental auto encephalomyelitis" - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306452209015589


BPC-157 [Scholar link - http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&q=bpc-157]
"Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 (PL 14736) improves ligament healing in the rat" - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jor.21107/full
"Effective Therapy of Transected Quadriceps Muscle in Rat: Gastric Pentadecapeptide BPC 157" - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jor.20089/pdf
"BPC 157's effect on healing" - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0928425797894806
"The pharmacologicial properties of the novel peptide BPC 157 (PL 10)" - http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10787-999-0022-z
"A new gastric juice peptide, BPC. An overview of the stomach-stress-organoprotection hypothesis and beneficial effects of BPC" - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/092842579390038U (First discovery of BPC)

Other noteworthy study:
"Wound healing dressings and drug delivery systems: A review" - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jps.21210/full

-----

Here are some quick simple facts -

What are peptides
- Molecule created by joining 2 or more amino acids together
- Present in every living cell

Neuropeptides
- Produced in the brain, found in neural tissue
- Signals and regulators in processes triggered from within the brain

Alkaloids
- Used in defence mechanism
- In plants, fungi and small animals

Structure
- When they reach a length of 50 molecules or more they form a protein

Ligament
- Dense bands of fibrous connective tissue serve to join 2 or more bones
- Function to provide stability to a joint
- Comprised of water, collagen and various amino acids
- Collagen is 75% of weight (proteoglycans, elastin and glycoproteins)
- Fibroblasts are located between rows of collagen fibres

Healing
- 3 stages are acute inflammatory, proliferative/repair and remodelling

What is a growth hormone
- Produced in anterior pituitary
- Blend of amino acids
- Released in pulsating
- Structure determines strength
- Binds to receptor leading to protein transcription

BPC-157
- Derived from human gastric juice
- Upregulates growth hormone
- No side effects or toxicity found
- Enhances migratory ability of fibroblasts
- First discovered in 1993 and studied by P,Sikiric

 

[UncleAl]

Wow, mate. Got quite an education from reading your log for the first time. Love the way you are aggressively attacking your bump in the road. You are young. You are smart. You are tenacious. You WILL be victorious. The very best to you.

 

[hoodlum]

10 weeks until snowboarding - began on TB-500 yesterday, 250mcg

As its such a low dose, I'm going to run the BPC-157 concurrently. Purely from a price perspective I'm not able to run the BPC at the same ng/kg dosage as the studies however from what I've read and how the healing pathways work, I don't see why these peptides shouldn't work together. I will use TB-500 at this dose (250mcg per day or roughly 2.3ng/kg) until I go away in 10 weeks. I will begin BPC-157 in 4 weeks time at 500mcg per day and stay on that for the 6 weeks leading up to my trip. Since I'm flying overseas, I'm not going to take any of this with me - its not worth the risk.

Although its only day 2, no changes noticed yet. Swelling has been gradually going down and additional swelling when it isn't elevated, hoping to alleviate this and notice improve overall swelling.

I also want to note, for anyone that's following my log of this but not going to read the studies themselves I think there is something important to note. Its often claimed that peptides (in this case I'm talking about BPC but the sentence extends to others) are beneficial for inflammation/swelling. I'm sure we all know by now that every supplement company wants to have the 'new' thing and push their products as the best, if I believed all of the labels in the supplement shop every protein powder is apparently the best for me. The same extends to open peptide selling, often the information here is pushed by companies selling the stuff (they advertise on their website it stops swelling, makes it sound scientific and even possibly link to a study) and that information is parroted. If you look closer at why BPC is known to help inflammation, it hasn't got a lot to do with wounds/healing/swelling as we think of it, there is some evidence to point to it but many people are drawing their conclusions from the wrong thing, if you look at an article on wound healing (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10787-999-0022-z), it cites BPC as being anti-inflammatory and references the study "Sikiric, P., Seiwerth, S., Grabarevic, Z. (1997) Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 positively affects both non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents-induced gastrointestinal lesions and adjuvant arthritis in rats. J. Physiol. (Paris)" now peptide companies go off and love this, because they don't quote the original study which is only examining gastrointestinal lesions (stomach damage/cuts/abnormality) but they quote the article and say its for sports injuries. This isn't a scientific mistake, it's either a lack of understanding and comprehension from sellers of a product or its a ploy to sell their product. So for everyone that's reading things, make sure what your reading is relevant to what your looking for.

 

[Bullmuscle7]

Hoodlum!


Glad you are back and on the mend!

You have been through hell but you are so strong brother and pulling through this.

I'm glad you are going to log your peptide use. I will be following.

Prayers for your continued recovery brother.

 

[hoodlum]

Thanks Bull, always the most encouraging comments. When I've got some actual content I'll copy it all out into a separate thread in the peptide section so it doesn't get lost and hopefully some information for those not following

 

[Fury]

Best of luck and a speedy recovery the biggest thing I found when I was recovering from surgery on my shoulder was the mental part of it staying focussed and the frustration it so long to recover

 

[hoodlum]

Day 3 - no changes noticed yet (not expecting them quickly so things are on course). For anyone that's wondering administration is Sub-Q once daily. No pain or bruising at all from injections so far. Clexane is also being administered Sub-Q daily so feeling like a pincushion.

 

[hoodlum]

Day 4 - no changes noticed yet, as expected. I expect this will be a repeated sentiment for a while.

 

[hoodlum]

Day 5 - no changes noticed yet. Been very mobile lately and lots of walking on foot in cam boot, need to elevate for awhile