Heal Your Chronic Tendon Pain

Did your tendon pain start from some specific activity and gradually became so much worse that the pain now accompanies all kinds of activities? The pain might burn, sting, or ache. Sometimes the pain can start without knowing the cause, but often it is associated with a repetitive motion activity such as typing, tennis, playing the drums, or running. You can often tell that the pain is located specifically in a tendon, and you can point to the spot.

Chronic tendon injuries like those described above are called tendinosis or tendinopathy. These words refer to an accumulation over time of small-scale injuries that don't heal properly, resulting in a chronic injury of failed healing. Although you can't see the tendinopathy injury on the outside of your body, researchers can see the injury on the cellular scale by viewing slides of  tendons under the microscope. Tendinopathy can occur in many different areas, such as the wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder, knee, and heel.

Tendons are rope-like structures that attach muscles to bones. Ligaments are similar structures that attach bones to other bones. When muscles and bones move, they exert stresses on the tendons and ligaments that are attached to them.

When your muscles move in new ways or do more work than usual, your muscles and tendons can sustain some damage on a cellular scale. If the increase in demand is made gradually, muscle and tendon tissues will usually heal, strengthen, and adapt to new loads. Athletes use these principles to build strength with good training programs..

You can, however, do some activity that injures a tendon on a microscopic scale and then do more injury before the tendon heals. If you continue the injurious activity, you will gradually accumulate these micro-injuries. When enough injury accumulates, you'll feel pain. This kind of injury that comes on slowly with time and persists is a chronic injury. The process of failed healing is described in more detail on the page titled Why Failed Healing.