I can't tell you how much joy it gives me to be riding a BMX bike again. I've been on a 6 or 7 year hiatus, but purchased a new BMX bike last fall. It was embarrassing, awkward, painful, and exhausting for the first 20 or so hours on the thing, but I'm happy to say, this spring the joy has come back, and the progression has continued. Sunday I did my first handrail down a set of stairs. To be fair, it was a skatepark set up, and slightly scaled down from reality, but the fear was just the same. Its moments of action through fear that really give this particular sport an addictive quality beyond road and mountain biking. And now I can't ride. I'm itching for another fix too. It's gorgeous out, but I'm sitting here with an ice-pack tapping out a long over-due blog update.
There was no event that directly caused my injury, it was simply the result of an hour and a half of my fresh flow and wicked stylings [sarcasm added]. But something deep in my lower back became incredibly unhappy. BMX is a sport that uses the same muscle group as rowing. Rather than even slow reps that rowers employ, it's more like dragging your oars for awhile and then yanking them as hard as you can in fast 2 or 3 stroke bursts. It's a fairly plyometric exercise. (I'm sorry, I hate the word plyometric, but that's the curse of vocabulary, you might have the perfect word, but often deploying it means coming across like a douche.) Because of this, it's pretty easy to strain yourself, especially as a 28 year old coming back to a sport such as BMX. It has been said, to borrow a hated term, BMX is "extreme". My back understands that old kicked around 90's buzzword a little better today.
Which brings me to design. After the injury, I wasn't really sure how to treat it. I've only pulled a muscle once before. Genevieve made me take some ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), which got me thinking, what is inflammation and why must I stop it? This has been a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
I found an article on the University of Michigan Medical School website Medicine at Michigan dot org that spoke about what inflammation is.
"Inflammation is the body’s first line of defense against injury and infection, but it’s a double-edged sword. An out-of-control inflammatory response can destroy healthy tissue and cause more damage than the original problem."
This and many other sources go on to explain the inflammation is the sort of root problem to many of todays diseases. They speak of "silent inflammation" a sort wide spread, less symptomatic instance that leads to large problems. A recent TED talk about Angiogenesis control (creating blood vessels) may also have a direct link to many common diseases, and some guy with a blog collated (with references) some interesting research about the relation of inflammation and angiogenesis with cancer treatment.
Wow, I was finding that inflammation is a big deal. But I couldn't get over the very first part I read about inflammation being the body's first line of defense. Why should I take ibuprofen if my bodies defense response is inflammation!?
So, ibuprofen, naproxen, and all the other over-the-counter NSAIDs regulate a special class of chemicals called prostaglandins. Here is what medicinenet says about prostaglandins:
"They promote inflammation, pain, and fever; support the blood clotting function of platelets; and protect the lining of the stomach from the damaging effects of acid."
These are all seperate functions, it just happens to control stomach lining, as well as inflammation (hence the warnings about stomach problems). So the anti-inflammatories have a very real effect of pain reduction, because the inflammation increases pain sensitivity, and increases blood flow. So if we set aside pain-mitagation, just how the hell is this helping my injury? I asked my physician today, and the only answer I sort of got was a half-hearted agreement that it was to keep inflammation from sort of 'running away'. I'm to start a regimen of Naproxen (Aleve) equal to about 12 advils a day, for a week.
I'm not scared to take this stuff, I'm really not, but I'm amazed at how difficult it was to find a why. I'm still not satisfied though. I'm a healthy guy, all readings are normal, why the hell should I be worried about local injury inflammation that opens the pipes up for white blood cells, and other positive helpers. Back to the Michigan article;
"One of the most important discoveries made by Ward and other scientists over the last 20 years has been the identification of a network of natural anti-inflammatory mediators, produced by the immune system to offset activity of pro-inflammatory agents. This network of “chill out” signals keeps inflammation focused on the area of local infection or injury, and prevents a runaway response that can spread through the body."
The body can do this? Why must I interfere in THIS case? Let me be clear, I know that NSAIDs are incredibly important for a lot of situations, and a lot of people, for a lot of reasons. They have a decent safety track record (though there are plenty of issues). I'm NOT saying people shouldn't take these for any reason, I just wanted to know what and why I need to, in this specific situation. I don't think my prostaglandins are having problems, why should I think I can regulate them better than my body? I'll take healing over pain-mitigation, if those are the options before me. Are they?
I pushed a little further.
Deborah Mitchell, a freelance medical reporter, submitted an article to this God-awful looking medical news website called EMaxHealth. It was in reference to research published through FASEB, which seems pretty legit to me, check it yourself here. Here's the point:
"Lan Zhou, MD, PhD, at the Neuroinflammation Research Center, Department of Neurosciences, Lerner Research Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and his team found that inflammatory cells called macrophages present in acute muscle injury produce high levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a substance that increases the rate of muscle repair. Thus inflammation is beneficial when it comes to healing muscle injuries."
THANK YOU! My man Lan here, and his team found, LAST YEAR that the body does things on purpose. What a revelation! The conclusions run against a lot of the things I've found to be 'common knowledge' concerning this situation. I'm going to go forward with NSAIDs now, after 3 days of letting the pain keep me from further damaging it (pain, after all is an explicitly useful reaction). I am absolutely blown away that this is something discovered in 2010. If the medical industry can't see the body and its functional chemicals like prostaglandins as purposeful, they need a really intensive lesson in design thinking. It seems to me, my experience today shows a bit of distrust toward the body within the medical industry. How has this not been researched before? Are the NFL players listening? Athletes all over the world should be interested in this, otherwise they are very likely depriving their muscles of beneficial, body-made drugs that are showing up through dilated blood vessels. This is a big deal isn't it?
I don't think you have to believe in God to think of the body as design. Call it design by un-guided evolution if you want to, but have some respect for it. Just because mitigating pain is possible with minor side-effects (for most), doesn't mean we should go straight to the ice and swelling reduction through drugs. How has this belief survived for so long, and how long will it be until people actually do things differently?
It's all design. Even information distribution.
GeorgeP
