I'm wondering if anyone else on s4me is having tendon issues in the arms/elbows. I use the computer, but to be honest it's a modest amount. I had a work-up for auto-immune conditions but they were all negative with no antibodies to the connective tissue orders, only a very slightly positive ana. I'm kinda baffled as if it's not rsi as I'm not straining them and not auto-immune how they could have developed and not gone away (I'm also fairly young for these kinds of issues).
I don't really know where to look to fix them (supplements are too hard on my stomach) and how to figure out what it is. But, I guess another nagging idea is that it's part of me/cfs, but I didn't have it for years previously and it doesn't seem to have a positive relationship in symptomic appearance to fatigue, brain fog, etc..
I have heaps of tendon and ligament problems, from shoulder to ankle. Just talking arms I have recurrent issues with: left rotator cuff, right biceps tendinopathy, left and right tennis as well as golfer's elbow - without ever having played either sport - plus left and right wrist flexor tendonitis on both sides as well as right thumb. Currently only the rotator cuff and the biceps tendinopathy are bothersome, the others come and go
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No hint of autoimmunity in my case either and there doesn't seem to be a link with ME severity.
The only thing that makes me speculate about a possible connection with ME is that my first encounters with tendon problems (ankle) happened just as I was going into a sort of remission, sadly temporary, after my initial ME episode. I think there's been some suggestions that maybe our collagen gets broken down more or something similar, so I wonder if maybe my tendons got weaker during those years with ME but nothing happened then because I was so sedentary but once I started to be more active the tendons couldn't handle it?
My tendons seem very weak in that it doesn't take very much at all for them to get injured. The last time my rotator cuff went ping was when I opened a ranch slider door. And I have to be very careful about using devices or elbows or wrists play up again very quickly.
Here is a very extensive review of tendon problems and the various hypotheses about causes. The short version is nobody really knows. However, several of the proposed mechanisms thought to be involved in tendon injury or healing sound familiar, e.g. glucose & lactate metabolism, and hypoxia but until much more is known about both ME and about tendon problems we won't know if there's any link or some of us are just unlucky to be hit by both.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037288/
I've never found anything that helps apart from using the affected body part as little as possible and waiting it out. Tendons are
very slow to heal. Sometimes when there's clear inflammation anti-inflammatory painkillers help a little but mostly not. On the wrists I found bracing somewhat helpful. I haven't tried it on the elbow or shoulder.
My husband is currently battling Achilles tendinopathy and his physio strapped his calf and advised initial rest followed by very gentle mobilisation (range of motion type stuff) followed by exercises to very gradually build up load capacity. Warned it could take several months to recover. Not what you want to hear I guess...
