Dale!

[JamesC]

My new job has me carrying a heavy steel hook all day and pulling hundreds or thousands of stacks of milk for eight hours or more.

My hands have been swelling a lot the last week or so and I'm definitely developing some tendinitis in my fingers. I've stopped practicing iron palm until I get I under control.

I know you sell different jows for different purposes and was wondering if you had anything that may help?

Te pain isn't debilitating but the swelling is fairly comical. Look like the hamburger helper lol. Quitting isn't an option.

[Bacon]

Stick them in cool water at the end of the day. It will help reduce swelling and pain. Make sure you're getting lots of protein throughout the day as you'll be tearing into those little muscles pretty hard.

As long as you can endure and the muscles aren't getting seriously torn just follow the above until your muscles adapt to the increased workload. The tendons will take a little longer to get used to the increased demand so my suggestion is to make sure you have good technique. Try to focus on gripping with the middle, ring, and little finger which will help lock any load into the palm more effectively and reduce the overall strain. If you're carrying larger items try to hook with your hands and carry the weight with your bone structure rather than squeezing with the hands.

Trust me I know what it's like. I worked at an electronics recycling plant pulling 10 hour days tearing things apart with hand tools and gloved hands and carrying tons of heavy stuff all day long.

[Dale Dugas]

It could be that you are working in a cold environment which is affecting the swelling of your hands in response to the new stress load you are putting on them.

My suggestion is to get a heating pad and warm them up at the end of the day. Do this for about 10-15 mintes.

If you want to ice down the hands after you warm them up with a ice bag do not use it more than 10 minutes at a time. Take a break and then again apply it for 10 minutes.

You can get some fish oil capsules as fish oil is a NSAID, Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory as well as being food. Take 4 grams a day which is two capsules in the morning and two in the evening. This will help you will inflammation and circulation as it acts as a natural blood thinner.

You can also try warming some dit da jow and using the warm jow on the affected hand. after you have iced it down. In other words. you are causing vasoconstriction using the ice and then vasodilation with the warm jow.

You will increase circulation and help heal the affected areas much better than using only one modality.

I sell some decent Dit Da Pill that can help with the swelling as well.

Let me know how I can be of service to you.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Or you can stop being such a p uss y !
:D

[Bacon]

It could be that you are working in a cold environment which is affecting the swelling of your hands in response to the new stress load you are putting on them.

My suggestion is to get a heating pad and warm them up at the end of the day. Do this for about 10-15 mintes.

If you want to ice down the hands after you warm them up with a ice bag do not use it more than 10 minutes at a time. Take a break and then again apply it for 10 minutes.

You can get some fish oil capsules as fish oil is a NSAID, Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory as well as being food. Take 4 grams a day which is two capsules in the morning and two in the evening. This will help you will inflammation and circulation as it acts as a natural blood thinner.

You can also try warming some dit da jow and using the warm jow on the affected hand. after you have iced it down. In other words. you are causing vasoconstriction using the ice and then vasodilation with the warm jow.

You will increase circulation and help heal the affected areas much better than using only one modality.

I sell some decent Dit Da Pill that can help with the swelling as well.

Let me know how I can be of service to you.

You do realize that there's continuing trauma to the hands and hemorrhaging will be causing the swelling. Heat is the worst thing he could do at this point.

[Dale Dugas]

You do realize that you know nothing about anything.

You are not a licensed health care provider.

Until said time where you identify yourself, your health care education background and your current licensure, you need to close your piehole.

Ice is for dead people.

Let the experts talk now little one.

[Crushing Step]

Whose advice to take... Licensed TCM practitioner who everyone knows and respects, or an anonymous guy named "bacon"...

[Bacon]

I believe this is about the part where Dale accuses me of slander, libel, and/or mouthboxing.

Dale if you don't know basic treatment for injuries you're even more of an idiot than I thought. Heating an injury will increase blood flow leading to increased blood flow in an are which is already hemorrhaging. This is common medical knowledge. That's why RICED is your basic first aid procedure for a tear and that what this is... A continuing set of tears and trauma to the soft tissue.

And for Dale I would recommend a CAT scan or MRI to find the source of his brain damage.

[Crushing Step]

You could always run some bacon on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSReSGe200A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[Dale Dugas]

As Crushing Step pointed out.

Advice from a licensed health care provider or some gobblygook from a netghost.

Western medicine really has no clue when it comes to traumatic injuries compared to Chinese medicine.

Let me know how I can be of service.

[Bacon]

As Crushing Step pointed out.

Advice from a licensed health care provider or some gobblygook from a netghost.

Western medicine really has no clue when it comes to traumatic injuries compared to Chinese medicine.

Let me know how I can be of service.

Riiiiiight. I'll go back to letting you live in your fantasy world now Dale.

[Dale Dugas]

Again let me know how I can be of service to anyone seeking licensed medical care.

[Bacon]

Again let me know how I can be of service to anyone seeking licensed medical care.

From a quack who clearly knows nothing about even basic medicine.

[GeneChing]

...:rolleyes:

To get back OT, JamesC, what is working for you? Did either of the remedies have any effect?

[LaterthanNever]

Bacon,

I have two medical doctors in my family. Perhaps you should revisit the title of this forum..it's for ORIENTAL medicine/healing. Not Allopathic suggestions..:o:rolleyes:

[JamesC]

I've been taking the fish oil and warming my hands after work. So far, everything I good. No swelling or pain.

[Dale Dugas]

Excellent!

Let me know how I can be of service.

[JamesC]

Thanks dale. Actually, as soon as I'm able to start up the iron palm again I'll need some of your jow. Not gonna rush back into it though. Although it seems counter intuitive, I've been using regular iron palm practice for tendinitis in my thumbs. No idea why, but it helps tremendously. Hoping it will have the same affect on my hands now.

[Dale Dugas]

The tapping on the bag can help heal many issues as the medicine and the small amount of stress added to the hands helps stimulate circulation and it also helps release a lot of tension so you see some issues resolve. Also the medicine involved creates better circulation so the two together create a healing response for many.

I needle patients all day and my hands do not get tired nor do they get sore.

Glad to hear your hands are better.

Thanks again for letting me know what was going on.

[Bacon]

You know all arguments aside as long as his hands are feeling better I'm glad.

[Fa Xing]

Dale,

I've got a quick question for you, my hands take a beating from both MA training and from doing Chiropractic stuff (palpating, adjusting, etc.); do you have any recommendations (herbs, etc) on keeping them healthy, so I can have a long career?

[Dale Dugas]

Hand health is important as you do not want to lose but gain strength and longevity of the hands.

I use a strong Dit Da Jow daily combined with stretching and liberal use of exercises that open and close my hands/fingers to help keep them limber.

With all the muscles attached to the lower arm and hands, up your protein as you are putting all those muscles under serious stress loads and you want to feed the muscles.

Fish oil is a good anti inflammatory that helps keep inflammation down.

Good dit da jow has anti inflammatory herbs as well as pain killers to help deal with minor injuries and aches.

I massage liniment into my hands in the morning after lunch and when I get home to ensure my hands are healthy and strong for all the things I do.

Let me know how I can be of service, brother.

[Fa Xing]

Is there a particular dit da jow formula you recommend?

[Dale Dugas]

Any decent Iron Palm or Injury formula can help.

I have many formulations that can help.

[Fa Xing]

Thanks, I will peruse your site!

[Lee Chiang Po]

What you need is a different job.

[Fa Xing]

Me? I'm not officially practicing yet, but I wouldn't give helping those heal their bodies for anything in the world. It's the best thing I could think of doing.

[SoCo KungFu]

As Crushing Step pointed out.

Advice from a licensed health care provider or some gobblygook from a netghost.

Western medicine really has no clue when it comes to traumatic injuries compared to Chinese medicine.

Let me know how I can be of service.

This has to be one of the most BS statements I've seen on here in a while, one that I wouldn't expect from you. And frankly, my experience as a western medically trained and certified medic with a specialization in Aeromedical Evac and actual trauma experience in the military would seem to trump your TCM experience (which in the US with regards to trauma, is to say relatively none, at least not legally) by a large margin. Unless you're trying to argue that TCM is better at treating stubbed toes and achy feet...come back when you can needle someone out of shock....

And what Bacon said was right, in general you do not want to apply heat to fresh injuries because you will only exacerbate the symptoms. So your attitude really isn't appropriate. And by your logic, thousands of doctors trained in modern physiology aided with state of the art technology or a practitioner of a medical practice that espouses invisible energy, whose advice should be sought? TCM has some gems, but its not the be all and in many ways its flat our wrong. And frankly, I find the majority of alt med these days predatory.

OP, glad your hands are better. However, neither of these two are completely correct. RICE is the typical treatment for this type of thing, but there really isn't a lot of uniform evidence for compression. Its not to say that compression doesn't help, but the studies haven't been consistent with duration and treatment protocols to get a scientifically defensible conclusion. But you may want to try compression gloves and see if they help. Applying ice will help prevent further swelling, however, it won't help with any that is already present. In general, ice is better for acute trauma and heat better for chronic issues unless there's swelling present. Physical trauma is going to produce ruptures in the blood vessels, mainly capillaries. The capillary walls are only 1 cell in thickness (because this is where gas exchange occurs) and thus easily traumatized. This causes leakage of fluid into the tissue, producing localized edema. Ice will help constrict these vessels and stop that leakage. It won't correct any swelling already present, because lowering the temperature decreases tissue permeability and lowers the osmotic pressure that would drive fluid to leave the cells.



Benefits Of Cold Application On
Inflammatory Response
Historically, five cardinal signs of inflammation
were identified: pain, swelling, heat, redness and
loss of function. However, signs of
inflammation are not inflammatory response.
The inflammatory reaction consists of
overlapping stages that can impair tissue
function or structure [8]. The r reason for
applying cold therapy (e.g., ice) after an injury is
to cool tissues to accomplish the following
physiological objectives: decrease inflammation,
inhibit swelling (edema), diminish blood supply
(vasoconstriction), decrease hemorrhage, inhibit
temperature elevation, reduce metabolic
alterations (cold decreases the metabolic rate,
thereby lessening secondary injuries due to lack
of oxygen), assuage pain (cold decreases nerve
conduction speed), and, ultimately, speed up the
recovery of the patient to resume normal
functions

Heat will help get things moving because it helps relax muscles and opens up the lymph vessels (which are what actually drain most of that fluid). But, that does open up blood vessels as well, which will bring more fluid to the sight. This is why heat is best used later, after those vessels have had a chance to heal.

For immediate treatment, now that the swelling is down, typically you want to use ice. If heat is working, I'd keep doing it as well after icing (hot/cold immersion therapy). The heat worked because your injury was old. After a day or so, ice becomes ineffective and you should use heat at that point to move the fluids out. By then, the vessels should be healed anyways (assuming you aren't continually damaging them). Contrast baths are a little controversial in their actual effect. From what I've read, which probably isn't as much as say, TGY, it seems that just cold has more beneficial effect in trial studies. There is some evidence that it has an enhanced effect on clearance of plasma lactate following exercise, which could aid in recovery by allowing the tissue to recover proper pH more readily. But I'm not sure if that will mean much for your type of issue.

[JamesC]

Most of that is over my head, honestly. What I do know is I haven't had any problems with swelling since. I'll leave the reasons to you guys

[taai gihk yahn]

Western medicine really has no clue when it comes to traumatic injuries compared to Chinese medicine.
srsly? or just feeling a bit heady with the "healer's high" u've been getting regularly now?

c'mon Dale, that's just silly, and as SoCo pointed out, yu should know better; I mean, it's like me coming on here and talking about how osteopathic manual work (western) makes tuina (Chinese) look like something a kindergartner thot up - that wud b awfully uncouth...

[Dale Dugas]

Took you guys long enough......

It was a tongue in cheek moment.....

[taai gihk yahn]

Took you guys long enough......

It was a tongue in cheek moment.....

ok - maybe next time, try showing a little more "tongue" perhaps, a la :p

:)

[GeneChing]

We've already discussed Dale's cross-dressing here (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46827), so I gotta say 'no tongue'.

http://d2tq98mqfjyz2l.cloudfront.net/image_cache/1322630113561363.jpg

:p

[David Jamieson]

What I would like to know is why is TGY's spelling spiraling downward into such degradation?

Is he using a small phone to post these thoughts? :p

[taai gihk yahn]

What I would like to know is why is TGY's spelling spiraling downward into such degradation?

Is he using a small phone to post these thoughts? :p

i hav no idea wht u r tlkng abt...

[David Jamieson]

We need a spelling bee in here STAT!!