Exercise, good for diabetics, made difficult by tendonopathy

[elte]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health...SKCN0V72LN  -- "People with diabetes “should absolutely be physically active, as it is one of the most effective treatments for diabetes,” said Gaida, an assistant professor and physiotherapist at the University of Canberra in Australia.

Tendinopathy refers to injuries and inflammation of the tendons, the soft tissues that connect muscles to bones, usually due to overuse or repetitive movements. Having injured tendons may make it difficult to stick with exercise programs, which are essential for management of diabetes."

[C C]

People sometimes “launch themselves too aggressively into exercise programs and hurt themselves,” he said. “Any exercise that you take on, you should do it in a progressive manner. Start off gently and then increase in a rational way, and constantly observing results of your exercise to determine if in fact you are having any problems from the exercise program that you are on.” Gaida said the risk of tendinopathy for anyone can be minimized by gradually increasing activity levels and the rate of progression should be slower for someone with diabetes.

That seems to be one of the biggest roadblocks for people in general, as well. It looks simple enough to just begin doing a handful of exercises for a mere couple of minutes the first time and then slowly, gradually add to that day by day (or whatever). But unless it's a ritual established just before bedtime or at another time reliably safe from interruptions, the constant distractions throughout the rest of the day will either make it difficult to remember or repeatedly postpone those initial, brief activities. [Attention-grabbing competition from mobile devices, family requests & favors, menial tasks, individuals dropping by in person, etc.] So even the "gentle start-off" rarely gets a chance to be established as a daily habit.

Thus they wind up -- when they finally do get an uninterrupted or free interval during the week -- trying to make up for all those forgotten and lost attempts by filling that scarce 15 to thirty minutes or hour with the aggressive approach. The resulting pain later on then puts them off from wanting to exercise at all.

[elte]

It can feel intuitive that the key to building strength is to put the target area under a certain amount of stress to cause healing to leave the condition stronger than before the applied stress.  It seems to apply much more to muscles than tendons, however.  

https://experiencelife.com/article/tendon-trouble/ --  "Tendinosis, on the other hand, stems from chronic overuse rather than a single acute event. “With tendinosis, there’s an abnormal collagen or protein buildup — the tendon’s microfibers start to resemble sticky, overcooked spaghetti,” says Karim Khan, MD, PhD, assistant professor of family medicine and human kinetics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and coauthor of Clinical Sports Medicine (McGraw-Hill, 2006).

Damage occurs at a microscopic level long before symptoms of pain, tightness and soreness appear. As with tendinitis, you might feel anything from a slight twinge to a jabbing pain.

Tendinosis usually occurs because you have not rested enough between workouts that require heavy or stressful loading to the affected area. But, because researchers have ˙ not specifically identified an optimal rest period to prevent the condition, many fitness experts simply recommend that you follow a periodized program, with built-in deloading phases, to help prevent such overuse injuries. (For more on periodization, see “Chart a Course to Fitness” in the December 2007 archives.) Cross-training can also help you avoid overusing a particular area.

Unlike tendinitis, tendinosis often requires at least three to six months for recovery. “It’s not realistic to think you can heal in, say, six weeks, because it probably took a lot longer than that to reach the point of pain,” says Bryan Chung, MD, PhD, founder of the blog Evidence-Based Fitness (www.evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com).

Some physicians even stretch that recovery period to nine months or more. Tendinosis takes a considerable amount of time to heal because of limited blood flow to tendons, and because it can take 100 days for your body to reestablish strong collagen, which repairs damage."

[stryder]

In recent years I've been getting lazier. I use to walk quite regularly, however I've moved away from those walking routes that I used and a mixture of that and bad weather (and lapse memory) have left me being slightly fatter. I've never been a super fitness fanatic, I was never into sports so never really gained the same drive for activity as other people. I however do tend to try and exercise when I see too much size gain, unfortunately weather is a major inhibitor. If it's not dry, mild and sunny then it reduces the likelihood of myself actually walking. (Saying that however I don't drive so any shopping I do requires me to walk about a mile fill a backpack of 20litres with my shopping and return)

I do like however getting photo's of sunrises (I should get the sunsets too but I'm never up for both), so I tend to walk to the local beach and try to get there at the right time to get pictures. This of course causes problems because if I'm a bit late then I want to walk flat out, the problem with that speed is it tends to cause me to pull the calf muscles/tendons then I find myself having to limp the rest of my walk and that causes me not wanting to walk the next day or two.

I'd recently had this happen again, however during the weekend a local shop had a deal on some sweets from Greece (Halva containing Honey and something similar to Turkish Delight containing Icing Sugar and fructose) and I kind of binged on them. I don't know if I'm a diabetic or not, however I did find that the next day I walked I didn't cause any strains to my calves, so I considered at the time that it was likely due to the heightened level of sugar in my system (since usually I avoid sugars).

It made me look at the point of Diabetes and Tendon effects at roughly the same time as you posted this :/