[TheForge] blacksmith's elbow and cortizone

[Andrew Vida]

Get USANA.  It is a vitamin supplement tht is sold in one of those MLM 
schemes, which  turns me off, but I tried it and it worked.

I had so-called "tennis elbow" so bad I wanted to claw my own eyes out. 
  I could not hold anything.  Bibi got some of this USANA from a 
co-worker for a very severe tendonitis she had from too many years of 
working far harder than anyone should have to.  In about a 3 days her 
problem had subsided to nearly nothing.  So I took some and three to 
four weeks later I realized that my elbows were good again.  I still 
take USANA but not nearly as often as they want you to.  Instead of 
twice a day, maybe three times a week.

I also had a terrible time with sleep for perhaps 10 years and that went 
away as well, a fringe benefit.

The main drawback is pricing - @ $120/month it is not inexpensive.  I 
think their pricing is not that well thought out, but that's another issue.

Anyhow, I thought I'd mention it because it worked well for us.  I don't 
like MLM stuff because it smells like scam, even though this isn't.  I 
figure that even at that price, if it works it is at least marginally 
worth it.  I spent this past summer shoveling a couple hundred yards of 
red shale clay from under the house.  Had my elbows been in the shape 
they were in last year, that would not have been even remotely possible.

YMMV.

peter fels & phoebe palmer wrote:
> from NY times
> 
> But a major new review article 
> <http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2961160-9/abstract>, 
> published last Friday in The Lancet, should revive and intensify the 
> doubts about cortisone's efficacy. The review examined the results of 
> nearly four dozen randomized trials, which enrolled thousands of people 
> with tendon injuries, particularly tennis elbow, but also shoulder and 
> Achilles-tendon pain. The reviewers determined that, for most of those 
> who suffered from tennis elbow, cortisone injections did, as promised, 
> bring fast and significant pain relief, compared with doing nothing or 
> following a regimen of physical therapy. The pain relief could last for 
> weeks.
> 
> But when the patients were re-examined at 6 and 12 months, the results 
> were substantially different. Overall, people who received cortisone 
> shots had a much lower rate of full recovery than those who did nothing 
> or who underwent physical therapy. They also had a 63 percent higher 
> risk of relapse than people who adopted the time-honored wait-and-see 
> approach. The evidence for cortisone as a treatment for other aching 
> tendons, like sore shoulders and Achilles-tendon pain, was slight and 
> conflicting, the review found. But in terms of tennis elbow, the shots 
> seemed to actually be counterproductive. As Bill Vicenzino, Ph.D., the 
> chairman of sports physiotherapy at the University of Queensland in 
> Australia and senior author of the review, said in an e-mail response to 
> questions, "There is a tendency" among tennis-elbow sufferers "for the 
> majority (70-90 percent) of those following a wait-and-see policy to get 
> better" after six months to a year. But "this is not the case" for those 
> getting cortisone shots, he wrote. They "tend to lag behind 
> significantly at those time frames." In other words, in some way, the 
> cortisone shots impede full recovery, and compared with those ''adopting 
> a wait-and-see policy," those getting the shots "are worse off." Those 
> people receiving multiple injections may be at particularly high risk 
> for continuing damage. In one study that the researchers reviewed, "an 
> average of four injections resulted in a 57 percent worse outcome when 
> compared to one injection," Dr. Vicenzino said.
> 
> 
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