MCL Injury

[SnowDog]

Hey I was wondering does anyone have any advice about TCM treatments/ herbs for helping a MCL injury heal faster.
I hurt it skiing and am currently doing PT, but was wondering if anyone knew of anything that might help it heal a little faster.

[taai gihk yahn]

Hey I was wondering does anyone have any advice about TCM treatments/ herbs for helping a MCL injury heal faster.
I hurt it skiing and am currently doing PT, but was wondering if anyone knew of anything that might help it heal a little faster.

anecdotal evidence will suggest TCM dit da medicine; evidence based research would not - depends where your head is at;

how do you know it's your MCL, btw?

[SnowDog]

I had a MRI. The Dr said it's a tear that can heal w/o surgery. They have me in a brace and going to PT to get my mobility fully back. It's been about 10days since injured and he says I'm looking at another 3 to 5 weeks until Fully healed.

This is a new injury on a previously healed knee, and the Dr states I will be more likely to injure it again because it is a weakened joint. (so it looks like I better get used to wearing a brace from now on when doing anything physical)

We do have quite a few TCM clinics in town as well as a clinic attached to a TCM school, I was thinking I might try acupuncture (It worked on previous back and shoulder injuries I've had) but since my insurance doesn't cover "alternative Therapies" that might get costly.

I was poking around to see if there was a liniment or something that might speed up the healing process, or even help strengthen the joint itself.

I have used Dit Da for bruises over the years, but never for anything like this.

[TaichiMantis]

I've injured my mcl. First time I was in an immobilizer for 3 weeks then rehab. Second time healed on it's own in six weeks but ACL was gone so I had surgery.

Sifu has worked on my knees with jow. Mainly helps circulation to get toxins/swelling down and oxygenated blood to the injury to help healing.

[Dale Dugas]

I had a MRI. The Dr said it's a tear that can heal w/o surgery. They have me in a brace and going to PT to get my mobility fully back. It's been about 10days since injured and he says I'm looking at another 3 to 5 weeks until Fully healed.

This is a new injury on a previously healed knee, and the Dr states I will be more likely to injure it again because it is a weakened joint. (so it looks like I better get used to wearing a brace from now on when doing anything physical)

We do have quite a few TCM clinics in town as well as a clinic attached to a TCM school, I was thinking I might try acupuncture (It worked on previous back and shoulder injuries I've had) but since my insurance doesn't cover "alternative Therapies" that might get costly.

I was poking around to see if there was a liniment or something that might speed up the healing process, or even help strengthen the joint itself.

I have used Dit Da for bruises over the years, but never for anything like this.

SD,

I have a very strong dit da jow that is great for tendons and ligament issues.

Let me know if you are interested.

[SnowDog]

Thanks Dale,

Do you have a website that it can be ordered from?

[taai gihk yahn]

Thanks Dale,

Do you have a website that it can be ordered from?

he links to his website in his sig

[SnowDog]

Ok, I'm an idiot.

Thanks for pointing that out TGY.

[Dale Dugas]

I am having a sale on everything in the store.

use the code tiger at checkout and save 15% on your entire order.

[taai gihk yahn]

I had a MRI. The Dr said it's a tear that can heal w/o surgery. They have me in a brace and going to PT to get my mobility fully back. It's been about 10days since injured and he says I'm looking at another 3 to 5 weeks until Fully healed.

This is a new injury on a previously healed knee, and the Dr states I will be more likely to injure it again because it is a weakened joint. (so it looks like I better get used to wearing a brace from now on when doing anything physical)

We do have quite a few TCM clinics in town as well as a clinic attached to a TCM school, I was thinking I might try acupuncture (It worked on previous back and shoulder injuries I've had) but since my insurance doesn't cover "alternative Therapies" that might get costly.

I was poking around to see if there was a liniment or something that might speed up the healing process, or even help strengthen the joint itself.

I have used Dit Da for bruises over the years, but never for anything like this.

well, in NYS at least acupuncture is not considered "alternative", because the NYS Office of Professions licenses acupuncture the same way it does all other healthcare workers, from MDs all the way down to licensed massage therapists; as such, insurance typically pays for acupuncture the same way it pays for PT, chiropractic, etc.; of course, your state / insurer may be different, but the general trend these days is not what it was;

in general, a school-based clinic will be a fraction of the cost of a private practitioner for obvious reasons;

dealing with a strained ligament can be tricky, it's as much about prevention than anything else - MCL is somewhat the weak link to begin with, and of course tearing that is not desirable at all, but what you really want to be careful about is blowing out ACL; bracing is not a bad idea, avoiding torque stress would be another one - probably nothing your PT isn't telling you already; another thing to consider is big-picture - making sure that you have appropriate agonist / antagonist balance throughout all the musculature of your LE's and spine / pelvis - if your firing sequences are appropriate, then the chances that a given force will "override" the ability of the muscles of the knee to fire "protectively" during torquing movement will be less - good manual therapy combined with intelligent functional rehab is the way to go on this sort of thing (you*might want to look at some of the protocols they came up with to deal with the epidemic of ACL blowouts plaguing women's soccer, for example, which were shown to significantly reduce the incidence of that particular injury); you might also want to consider Kineseo Taping, which can help with muscle imbalances as well, without restricting movement at a given joint; point is that you want to be as proactive as possible at this point;

the dit da stuff is, in my subjective experience, helpful for certain things, though I;ve never seen it used for ligament injury specifically; certainly others on the forum might have, however, again, bear in mind that objective evidence of using an external linement to support healing has not been shown as to have effect either alone or when compared compared to other physical modalities such as ice / heat, stim, NSAIDS, iontophoresis, etc. - I'm not saying it doesn't have an effect, it's just that all evidence to date, AFAIK, is clinical / anecdotal, which doesn't mean it's of no value, but it is influenced heavily by patient / practitioner perception / predisposition, which can lead to a placebo effect (which is a very real phenomenon in terms of effect, but just not from the modality in question, is all)

[TaichiMantis]

It's not so much the jow as the massage (tui na) that has helped me heal faster. Sifu massages the swelling away from the heart and the injured area which can aid in regaining function faster.

[taai gihk yahn]

It's not so much the jow as the massage (tui na) that has helped me heal faster. Sifu massages the swelling away from the heart and the injured area which can aid in regaining function faster.

of course, this is another thing about jow - is it the jow or the massage or a combination? (my personal opinion is that it's the combination; right there though, you have a great research study: 1 group jow with massage, one group massage alone, one group massage with "placebo" jow; you could also do a no treatment control group, but if your persona ethics would preclude that, then the first three would be sufficient to see if at least there was a difference between massage and massage with jow; doing jow w/out massage would be hard, since you need to work it in - OTOH, if you were checking the effect of a plaster, that would be a different story...)

also, as far as massaging away from the heart - you realize that in order to decrease swelling, you actually want to move fluid back towards the heart, right? this is the direction that venus blood and lymph have to move in order to be recycled...

[SnowDog]

Thanks everyone for all their input, I appreciate the help.

I contacted the TCM school near me and their clinic only charges $20 a session, So I'm going to head there to see what type of treatment they recomend.

Thanks again