If you want to avoid an orthopedic surgeon at some point in your life, and don’t want lengthy, complicated advice, I have two simple principles:

1. Employ risk mitigation (this is the obvious one) : Wear seatbelts, dont text and drive, etc. (the other is not so obvious)

2. Change your diet to a #lowcarb diet for life. Why? Simple. It addresses the #rootcause or associations in most chronic diseases (obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, many cancers, benign prostatic hyperplasia, polycystic ovarian syndrome,...

...Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, dementia, etc) INCLUDING that which leads to joint pain/inflammation and tendon tears. Through a process called glycation, sugars get deposited on soft tissues, leading to Advanced Glycation End-products (AGEs). These AGEs...

...reduced the elasticity of soft tissues in your body, including muscles and tendons. They can also make them thicker. This is why rotator cuff tears of the shoulder tend to occur on middle-age individuals if they have a shoulder dislocation. Young people with a shoulder ....

...dislocation have elastic muscles and tendons that don’t tear easily. Loss of elasticity could also explain higher rate of meniscal tears in the knee. The meniscus tears more easily because of loss of elasticity; it is like a grummet..

... or shock absorber going through “dry rot,” if you will. AGEs also make ligaments thicker, which is why almost always when someone presents to my office with carpal tunnel syndrome and multiple trigger fingers they have diabetes. The thickened tendons have difficulty ...

...passing through the pulleys (causing triggering of the finger) and make the carpal tunnel tighter (causing the median nerve to get squeezed and give you the typical signs of carpal tunnel- numbness, pain, weakness, etc)...

...High levels of insulin can also cause inflammation in the joints (inflammation created by a cell called fibroblast-like synovial cells, which are located in your joints)...

...A low carb diet can also help in inflammatory type of arthritis such as gout (via fructose metabolism). The outcome data for these recommendations will eventually come out (and some of it already has), but the biochemistry shows why #lowcarb works...

...Cut sugars & excessive carbohydrates (fructose being the worst), cut inflammatory seed oils, perform high-intensity & resistance training (helps in preventing loss of muscle and bone mass), and risk mitigation and you are on your way to better orthopedic and overall health.