I recently went through 6 weeks of PT for injured tendons / tendinitis in my arms with 0 results.
The therapist suggested we try dry needling + electric stimulation for another 6 weeks. So we did that and I recovered 90% in the second 6 weeks of therapy.
There were side effects but they were minimal and completely gone now.
I was skeptical but sold on the benefits and relieved to have an effective therapy option to fall back on when it happens again as it does every couple years. Unfortunately, my insurance doesn’t pay for it.
Without a twin with the exact same injury and no intervention, to compare with, we don't know from this whether it was just the six extra weeks of healing that made the difference.
I do wonder if the first 6 weeks did the work, and the results appears in parallel with the alternate therapy. Of course, this sort of conversation is a prelude to "let's try alternate therapy first, for science!" with volunteers, so there is benefit.
Indeed, the takeaway I get from this is how we tend to underestimate how long healing takes. People expect major injuries to be healed in 6 weeks, but it often takes that long to simply turn the corner toward full healing.
Even with a twin, you still wouldn’t “know”, because there might have been a difference in either their injury, their ability to heal (people can heal at different rates for many non-genetic reasons), or other, even ‘random’ factors.
There is a well-known case study where a man ‘cracked’ each joint in one hand every day, and never ‘cracked’ any joint in the other hand for many years, to see whether it caused arthritis. He didn’t get arthritis in either hand. The only thing you can take away from that is that cracking the joints doesn’t necessarily cause arthritis for him.
The person posted an anecdote; you don’t have to rely on in, but your dismissal is shallow and unhelpful.
Yeah, that's a "no" from me dawg. My PT stuck the needle in, and I was fine with that. Then he moved it a little, and I turned pale as a ghost and started sweating. Same thing happened when I had my nerve conduction study - never again. Needles going in and out is fine. Needles moving around under my skin ain't gonna happen any more. (Except at the dentist, but that's what the laughing gas is for!)
I had the same thing happen once, and it was as fascinating as it was unsettling. Very slight movement of one needle in what seemed like a pretty inconsequential part of my body produced a near-instantaneous full-body reaction involving many systems.
I usually great with all kinds of pain, but I had to have injured fingernails removed and they put needles down the side of my fingers to numb them. Needles against the bone, not a feeling I want to experience again.
I didn't return for the other nail, I preferred to do it at home with a knife, it was less painful.
I had the same problem with my elbow, electrotherapy did not help. Turned out it was systemic inflammation in my body that was preventing it from healing. Change of diet fixed it.
Tendons take a long time to heal, much longer than skeletal muscle damage. I'm sure electric stimulation helped, but it could have just taken 12 weeks for the tendons to recover.
I've had electro-acupuncture to as part of my recovery from shoulder surgery. One possible side-effect is that nerves can occasionally misfire or auto-fire. It could manifest itself as a tick or a twitch, where a specific muscle fires on its own without any stimulus (or the wrong stimulus). It goes away with extra physical training. I guess it is to be expected as the needle does cause some minor physical damage on insertion and removal.
Do you have any opinion on tens units? I have found them ineffective, but perhaps one can be modified?
If you happen to be aware of a diy poor man's hack, maybe point me yonder. I gots lots o' problems. I'm also interested in zapping me 'ead, but that's more complicated and... seemingly expensive.
I see mention of the voltage of 200 mV/mm, though no mention if AC or DC, presume it is DC.
I have seen a few articles over the years on stimulating wound healing and did a little digging and found it goes back further than I appreciated:
1843: Carlo Matteucci (Italy) observes that wounded tissue generates a steady current — the first evidence of endogenous “healing current.”
Modern experimental era (1950s–1980s)
1950s–1960s: F. W. Smith and others at the Royal Free Hospital (London) and USSR researchers start applying DC microcurrents to chronic ulcers.
1960s–1970s: Robert O. Becker (NYU, later VA Medical Center) systematically studies wound and bone healing with DC and pulsed currents — showing accelerated healing and even partial limb regeneration in amphibians.
1972: Becker and Murray publish seminal paper: “Low intensity direct current stimulation of bone growth and wound healing.”
Late 1970s–1980s: Clinical trials on pressure ulcers and diabetic wounds using microamp DC show improved epithelialization.
Clinical device development (1990s–present)
1990s: FDA approvals for electrical bone-growth stimulators, later expanded to soft-tissue wound dressings.
2000s: Research into pulsed DC, AC, and capacitive coupling grows; low-frequency (1–200 Hz) electrotherapy devices enter wound-care practice.
2010s–2020s: Rise of microfluidic and bioelectronic dressings (like the Chalmers study, 2023), nanogenerators, and self-powered wound patches — merging electronics and biology.
Looking into the AC/DC aspects:
DC = best for directional healing and wound closure.
AC = best for tissue conditioning, circulation, and long-term comfort.
Combination or cycling gives the fastest and safest overall healing, especially for chronic or deep wounds. Also, prevent polarisation irritation over prolonged usage.
Certainly does feel like a technology that has been sleeping in the wind, and a future first aid tool. Of note, electronically, such a device could also aid in cleaning the wound by killing bacteria, which may be one reason that healing is improved.
Anecdata, but putting it out there because HN comments have solved many medical problems of mine that doctors couldn't:
I had a wound that wouldn't close and the thing that eventually got it to close was topical collagen powder - packed directly into the wound. This is something that the literature is quite positive on, but large Western hospitals mostly don't do for some reason. On oral collagen, the literature seems a bit more mixed but still generally positive. Collagen is something that used to make up a much larger part of our diet, so at the very least I don't think there's much risk in trying - and perhaps there are other benefits.
I won't comment on topical collagen as there is indeed reasons why it may work but we can be pretty sure oral supplementation is unnecessary, since it is just a protein, so if you get sufficient protein intakes (of the respective amino acids) then your body will just make it. Your body when digesting collagen (and other proteins) in almost all cases will just convert it into it's amino acids anyway. The supplement industry is just EXTREMRLY profitable and so distorts modern media and occasionally science.
The main concern to me of topical collagen for an open wound is that you probably don’t have good access to a medically sterile source of collagen. That’s probably safe enough to try on your own if you’re smart and careful, but the wrong brand or poor handling could add to the risk of infection or even toxicity. There may be a chicken-and-egg issue that there’s no source or no approved method a clinician would trust for that. Especially in the US, land of the lawsuit, it would probably take years of studies to come up with a protocol before it became moderately widespread.
There are sterile collagen wound dressings of all types available right now - including in sterile powder form - you can buy them as a consumer or a professional, and they _are_ in use around the world right now, they're just very unevenly popular.
This doesn't make much sense. Collagen is just a proline rich amino acid your body makes itself. Also you get the same type of amino acid by eating jello pudding. Sticking it directly into a wound shouldn't make much of a difference in healing, and if anything might be a bit dangerous if the collagen is contaminated in any way with bacteria.
Could you provide you literature citations here for reference?
It's an interesting idea to use it topically. There are all kinds of things that can be absorbed through the skin and used by the body. I don't have any knowledge of this specific mechanism and it may be completely impossible for the body to use anything from this kind of protein. But I'm glad some people are willing to try it.
>This doesn't make much sense. Collagen is just a proline rich amino acid your body makes itself. Also you get the same type of amino acid by eating jello pudding. Sticking it directly into a wound shouldn't make much of a difference in healing, and if anything might be a bit dangerous if the collagen is contaminated in any way with bacteria.
...what, lmao
1. Collagen is not an amino acid, it is a protein
2. The body makes a lot of things itself that we supply to sick or wounded people. It is SOP in any hospital to supply: various proteins, heat, enzymes, clotting factors, blood, hormones, steroids that the body makes itself... "The body makes (thing) itself" is an absurd reason not to supply something to the wounded. It does not make one iota of sense if you have even the slightest knowledge of medicine.
3. "Also you get the same type of amino acid by eating jello pudding." Yes, and you get salt and water from McDonalds fries, and yet we still use saline solution. Jerusalem artichokes are high in inulin, which we also use to measure kidney function. Why exactly would any of this have any bearing on its efficacy? Collagen, by the way, is the most abundant protein in mammals, so there are a long list of things aside from Jello that contain it.
4. Sterile collagen is widely available both OTC and to professionals
5. Sure. Here's a review of eleven RCTs on collagen dressings for wound healing. Pretty powerful results! doi:10.3389/fsurg.2022.978407
20 years ago when I was an undergrad I was studying the effect of electric fields on the chemical vapor deposition growth of (material du jour). Electricity turned what was a natural, random process, into one where we could direct the growth this way and that way. We didn't measure whether the growth rate was enhanced, but it's not surprising to me that a similar effect might show up all over the place to help speed along a natural process, because at the boundary, progressive chemical reactions isn't like stacking legos, it's like adding some, then taking a few away, then adding some more, and so on.
His lab's work is the most interesting I've come across in a long while. In the recent interview I linked, he says they have another paper coming out soon with even more wild stuff. He gets more into his ideas about why his methods work in the podcast as well. It's so cool to be tuned in to a candidate for the most impactful bio research of the next 20 years.
I'm all in favour of extra therapeutic options. But what jumped out at me was that 1 in 11 people worldwide have some form of diabetes.
This is surely a relatively new state of affairs so wouldn't it be a rather good idea to prevent it at source so to say rather than cope with the negative effects?
The real underlying reason for this is quite simple: Haber-Bosch enables us to have abundant and cheap food for everyone, and our evolutionary history hasn't wired us up to respond appropriately to that.
How does that "prevent it at source"? I was going to say "free access to meat and eggs" and then I read the rest of your comment. You are blaming metabolic dysfunction on the people setting low prices for food, did I read that right?
The purpose of medicine is twofold: to prevent and to cure. We shouldn't stop making medicines and therapies, and only investigate prevention of diseases.
I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't significant cross-over with this[0] observation of plant-roots growing faster when exposed to low-voltage electricity.
Not just skin, muscles also. It's standard therapy for some years already for partially torn muscles. As with my shoulder right now. Going to EMS therapy twice a week.
Readit News
I recently went through 6 weeks of PT for injured tendons / tendinitis in my arms with 0 results.
The therapist suggested we try dry needling + electric stimulation for another 6 weeks. So we did that and I recovered 90% in the second 6 weeks of therapy.
There were side effects but they were minimal and completely gone now.
It looked a little like this except on my arms:
https://youtube.com/shorts/pTEPMgDdy2A?si=MSx7YnmUbApsigWe
I was skeptical but sold on the benefits and relieved to have an effective therapy option to fall back on when it happens again as it does every couple years. Unfortunately, my insurance doesn’t pay for it.
There is a well-known case study where a man ‘cracked’ each joint in one hand every day, and never ‘cracked’ any joint in the other hand for many years, to see whether it caused arthritis. He didn’t get arthritis in either hand. The only thing you can take away from that is that cracking the joints doesn’t necessarily cause arthritis for him.
The person posted an anecdote; you don’t have to rely on in, but your dismissal is shallow and unhelpful.
Yeah, that's a "no" from me dawg. My PT stuck the needle in, and I was fine with that. Then he moved it a little, and I turned pale as a ghost and started sweating. Same thing happened when I had my nerve conduction study - never again. Needles going in and out is fine. Needles moving around under my skin ain't gonna happen any more. (Except at the dentist, but that's what the laughing gas is for!)
I didn't return for the other nail, I preferred to do it at home with a knife, it was less painful.
Laying down is fine for me. But if I'm seated I will start sweating, get really hot, feel nauseous, and almost pass out
This has happened during dry needling and just ultrasound therapy
(I'm vegetarian, and eat a lot of salty and sugary foods I'm not too proud of, and would love to learn what works for other people.)
If you happen to be aware of a diy poor man's hack, maybe point me yonder. I gots lots o' problems. I'm also interested in zapping me 'ead, but that's more complicated and... seemingly expensive.
I have seen a few articles over the years on stimulating wound healing and did a little digging and found it goes back further than I appreciated:
1843: Carlo Matteucci (Italy) observes that wounded tissue generates a steady current — the first evidence of endogenous “healing current.”
Modern experimental era (1950s–1980s)
1950s–1960s: F. W. Smith and others at the Royal Free Hospital (London) and USSR researchers start applying DC microcurrents to chronic ulcers.
1960s–1970s: Robert O. Becker (NYU, later VA Medical Center) systematically studies wound and bone healing with DC and pulsed currents — showing accelerated healing and even partial limb regeneration in amphibians.
1972: Becker and Murray publish seminal paper: “Low intensity direct current stimulation of bone growth and wound healing.”
Late 1970s–1980s: Clinical trials on pressure ulcers and diabetic wounds using microamp DC show improved epithelialization.
Clinical device development (1990s–present)
1990s: FDA approvals for electrical bone-growth stimulators, later expanded to soft-tissue wound dressings.
2000s: Research into pulsed DC, AC, and capacitive coupling grows; low-frequency (1–200 Hz) electrotherapy devices enter wound-care practice.
2010s–2020s: Rise of microfluidic and bioelectronic dressings (like the Chalmers study, 2023), nanogenerators, and self-powered wound patches — merging electronics and biology.
Looking into the AC/DC aspects: DC = best for directional healing and wound closure. AC = best for tissue conditioning, circulation, and long-term comfort.
Combination or cycling gives the fastest and safest overall healing, especially for chronic or deep wounds. Also, prevent polarisation irritation over prolonged usage.
Certainly does feel like a technology that has been sleeping in the wind, and a future first aid tool. Of note, electronically, such a device could also aid in cleaning the wound by killing bacteria, which may be one reason that healing is improved.
I had a wound that wouldn't close and the thing that eventually got it to close was topical collagen powder - packed directly into the wound. This is something that the literature is quite positive on, but large Western hospitals mostly don't do for some reason. On oral collagen, the literature seems a bit more mixed but still generally positive. Collagen is something that used to make up a much larger part of our diet, so at the very least I don't think there's much risk in trying - and perhaps there are other benefits.
I don't think everyone produces amino acids as efficiently as everyone else. For some people, perhaps supplementation is beneficial.
Could you provide you literature citations here for reference?
...what, lmao
1. Collagen is not an amino acid, it is a protein
2. The body makes a lot of things itself that we supply to sick or wounded people. It is SOP in any hospital to supply: various proteins, heat, enzymes, clotting factors, blood, hormones, steroids that the body makes itself... "The body makes (thing) itself" is an absurd reason not to supply something to the wounded. It does not make one iota of sense if you have even the slightest knowledge of medicine.
3. "Also you get the same type of amino acid by eating jello pudding." Yes, and you get salt and water from McDonalds fries, and yet we still use saline solution. Jerusalem artichokes are high in inulin, which we also use to measure kidney function. Why exactly would any of this have any bearing on its efficacy? Collagen, by the way, is the most abundant protein in mammals, so there are a long list of things aside from Jello that contain it.
4. Sterile collagen is widely available both OTC and to professionals
5. Sure. Here's a review of eleven RCTs on collagen dressings for wound healing. Pretty powerful results! doi:10.3389/fsurg.2022.978407
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcurrent_electrical_neurom...
20 min ted talk - https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c
3 hr lex fridman episode - https://youtu.be/p3lsYlod5OU
https://youtu.be/imTnPhE20YQ?si=oreeVM6vQyWpN9gV
This is surely a relatively new state of affairs so wouldn't it be a rather good idea to prevent it at source so to say rather than cope with the negative effects?
The real underlying reason for this is quite simple: Haber-Bosch enables us to have abundant and cheap food for everyone, and our evolutionary history hasn't wired us up to respond appropriately to that.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41574-025-01143-7
How does that "prevent it at source"? I was going to say "free access to meat and eggs" and then I read the rest of your comment. You are blaming metabolic dysfunction on the people setting low prices for food, did I read that right?
This is a simple behavior shift; it can help people begin making other behavior changes to help improve their health overall.
The purpose of medicine is twofold: to prevent and to cure. We shouldn't stop making medicines and therapies, and only investigate prevention of diseases.
[0]https://www.nature.com/articles/d44151-023-00162-5
[0] https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.20...