Dec 15 2020 Medical Rabbithole for RSI

I went on a deep dive in­to med­i­cal pa­pers about RSI and re­lat­ed top­ics and here is what I found:

Ten­don and Lig­a­ment Re­gen­er­a­tion and Re­pair: Clin­i­cal Rel­e­vance and De­vel­op­men­tal Par­a­digm states that ten­doin heal­ing re­spons­es are gen­er­al­ly weak and make treat­ment of ten­doin in­juries dif­fi­cult. A cer­tain pro­tein “Scle­r­ax­is”, a build­ing block for ten­doin tis­sue, is not suf­fi­cient­ly pro­duced.

Mu­ta­tions in COMP cause fa­mil­ial carpal tun­nel syn­drome finds that a mu­ta­tion of the “cati­lage oligomer­ic ma­trix pro­tein” (COMP), of­ten found in Carpal tun­nel syn­drome pa­tients, can cause in­abil­i­ty of this pro­teins job: fold­ing a cer­tain pro­tein in­to a ring of this pro­tein. If the fold­ing doesn’t suc­ceed, a residue is left in the “en­do­plas­mat­ic retic­u­lum” (ER), the gen­er­al pro­tein soup in a cell. If too many un­fold­ed pro­teins re­side in a cell, the body trig­gers a so called “Un­fold­ed pro­tein re­sponse”, a type of in­fla­ma­tion. Wikipedia men­tions that this re­sponse can be re­duced or im­proved with Omega-3 fat­ty acids (Chi­aseeds, Wal­nuts, Fish, …) and Gin­ger.

Cur­rent Progress in Ten­don and Lig­a­ment Tis­sue En­gi­neer­ing de­scribes the heal­ing process of ten­doins in “Ten­don/lig­a­ment re­pair and heal­ing”. Healed ten­don has poor bio­chem­i­cal and me­chan­i­cal prop­er­ties com­pared to nor­mal ten­don tis­sue, even less than 50% of qual­i­ty in many prop­er­ties.

This last one goes down the rab­bit­hole: Apop­to­sis is the process of “fall­ing leaves” in the body. A pro­grammed in­ten­tion­al death of cells, e.g. due to mal­func­tion or be­ing in some way com­prim­ised, wheter due to mu­tat­ed DNA or oth­er­wise. To avoid these cells repli­cat­ing, they are killed off (are their re­mains re­cyled?). TGF-be­ta-3 is linked to in­creas­ing Apop­to­sis by Di­etary fiber en­hances TGF-β sig­nal­ing and growth in­hi­bi­tion in the gut. In­hib­it­ed apop­to­sis is linked to can­cer and in­fla­ma­tion, so maybe a in­hib­it­ed re­gen­er­a­tion of cells.

As­sum­ing apop­to­sis is a de­sire­able process, we could be able to stim­u­late it through in­take of di­etary fibers: whole­wheat any­thing, fruit (en­tire thing, not the juice, that is with­out fiber), brokkoli, car­rots, peas, beans, pota­toes with skin and nuts and seeds.

Sug­ar in­take from fruit can al­so be de­fused by si­mul­ta­ne­ous in­take of fiber (i.e. fruit vs fruit juice), as stat­ed in WHY Sug­ar is as Bad as Al­co­hol (Fruc­tose, The Liv­er Tox­in).