Tendons and injuries - what causes them most?

between bones and muscles. By staying in a sitting position for a long time, you can easily damage these structures. Tendons and injuries. 

Tendons and injuries - what causes them most?
Tendons and injuries - what causes them most?

Tendons are dense connective tissue structures located between bones and muscles. By staying in a sitting position for a long time, you can easily damage these structures. Tendons and injuries.

With the beginning of the New Year and New Year's resolutions, many people choose to exercise. But sometimes people try to do too much too quickly. If you push your body to the limit, you may be at risk of injuries. One common example of an injury caused by overexertion is a tendon injury.

Tendons are structures that respond poorly to overexertion after prolonged sitting. In this article, we'll discuss the types of activities that can cause tendon injury.

What are tendons?

Tendons are dense tissue structures located at the ends of the muscles. Their function is to fix the muscles to the bones. Therefore, they make kinds of trailers.

They are also responsible for transferring the force generated by muscles to the bones. They are the means by which the body produces movement. As you can imagine, this makes them key players in the motor apparatus.

Since it is connective tissue, they are made of collagen. In particular, they consist of type 1 collagen fiber. These fibers are surrounded by an extracellular matrix which has a large number of fibroblasts. They are a type of connective tissue that produces collagen for the tendons.

It also has a large amount of water and substances derived from carbohydrates such as proteoglycans. All these features give these structures their hardness and flexibility.

How is a tendon injured?

A tendon can be injured in many ways, but they are always associated with blunt trauma or overexertion. When we talk about blunt trauma, the culprits are accidental falls or large bruises. They can cause inflammation of the tendon structures and eventually lead to tendinopathy.

When exercise causes an injury, the cause of the injury is muscle overload. A muscle that is overloaded or over-contracted can break away from the tendon and rub against other structures. In addition, lengthening the tendons can make them more susceptible to injury.

This often happens in movements that are performed while running, squatting, or even just cycling.

Symptoms of tendon damage

Symptoms of tendon injury depend on the type and location of the injury. However, they all usually have a few things in common:

  • Stiffness and moderate loss of mobility.
  • Pain and sensitivity when moving the joined joints.
  • Thickening of the joint.
  • You may hear or feel crackling sounds as the tendons move.
  • Treatment of tendinopathy

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Treatment of a tendon injury is similar to treatment of a muscle injury. It requires rest, as well as measures to strengthen the damaged area. At least this is the case when the tendinopathy is caused by excessive exercise.

  • Rest should be an active type of rest. That is, it is important to combine rest from the movements that caused the inflammation with more activity, and another type of movement that strengthens the tendon.
  • If you experience constant pain, you can use anti-inflammatory and analgesic ointments. Alternatively, you can take the drug by mouth.
  • If your tendinopathy returns, it's a good idea to see a physical therapist. They will be able to assess your case and tell you how to strengthen the tendons so that they do not restrict your sports activity.

Tendinopathy or tendinitis - what do you call a tendon injury?

We should explain a term that raises a lot of questions and controversy among people. This is the term "tendinitis" which literally means inflammation of the tendon. The suffix "-itis" relates to inflammation in the structure.

When a tendon is injured, it becomes inflamed in the tissue surrounding the specific tendon. There are many inflammatory mechanisms, but they can be summed up as the migration of cells of the immune system into the damaged area in order to repair it.

The cardiovascular system is the route through which this migration takes place. In particular, cells reach damaged tissue with the help of capillaries.

Tendon tissue is sterile. This means that the capillaries are not irrigating it. Instead, it gets its food from the extracellular matrix. Tissue that does not benefit from the rehydration of the blood must never become inflamed. This makes the term "tendinitis" as such inappropriate.