Brian (0s):
All right, Welcome to the Get Lean, Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn and haven't done a solo episode in a while, so I thought I'd just drop in here and talk a little bit about what's going on with my body and my health. Maybe this is something you could learn from, take a few things from it and you know, perhaps use it with your situation if you do have a similar one as mine. I've been having some shoulder issues, just maybe like a dull pain in my shoulder most of the day and my knee's been flaring up when I do mainly lower body workouts. Squatting in particular, I can walk from day to day.
Brian (42s):
It seems fine from that, but, so anyways, went to an orthopedic And you know, he, he mentioned maybe getting an MRI, so I figured what, you know, I might as well. I wanna learn as much as I can and try to improve my situation. So, recently got the MRI back on my knee and shoulder. My honest opinion before I got it back was I thought that I would, the knee would be probably be not much wrong, maybe just some fluid and the shoulder, perhaps maybe a tiny a tear, but I was wrong on that. The, the knee actually had a grade four cartilage loss in the knee and I had some bursitis and bicep tendon inflammation in my shoulder.
Brian (1m 30s):
So fluid building up in both joints. And so, you know, the good thing about the shoulder is there's nothing, nothing structurally wrong with it. You know, the rotator cuff look good. No labrum tears or anything like that. You know, the cartilage loss in the knee and the bone to bone there obviously is not great, but you can just, you know, I, at, at this point I, I can do pretty much everything I wanna do with walking and things like that other than, you know, I just gotta be careful around squats. So all in all, not the worst picture. I got an anti-inflammatory from the orthopod called meloxicam, but I figured it's a guy who's coaching mainly men over 40 on rebuilding their body.
Brian (2m 18s):
Naturally I should sort of look and see if there's a better way to, you know, help rebuild the body, whether through supplements, movement, you know, training modifications. And that's what I wanted to go through today. Sort of m my reasoning behind what I'm gonna do to help get my shoulder right first and then just sort of manage the knee. I will say it was cool, I got the MRI back and the findings, you know, that aren't necessarily in the most easy to read English to understand the process. So I did use Claude, which has been unbelievable. It's probably one of my better friends, Claude AI if you haven't used it.
Brian (3m 2s):
But, so I'll just explain to you in sort of plain English what the MRI found and then we'll get into what I'm doing. The knee, as I mentioned, grade four chondromalacia, it's cartilage on the inner knee cap is completely gone. Bone on bone, that's the worst grade you can get. So not so great from that standpoint, but not feeling it too much, which is good. Subc chondral edema, which is like a pooling of fluid. The bone itself is swollen underneath where the Carla used to be. This is where I can, you know, you sometimes might feel it when you're walking upstairs, but I actually haven't really been, so I've been lucky on that point.
Brian (3m 44s):
And then mild joint effusion, so that's like fluid buildup inside the joint. And then the shoulder is something called subor bursitis. If I'm pronouncing this wrong, I apologize. Inflammation in the bursa at the front of the shoulder. This is what fires up. What I can sort of feel when I'm swinging my golf club. It's not so bad on the, on the takeaway, but it's the follow through. I can sort of feel it when that shoulder crosses my body, my right arm on my right shoulder and then the long head of the biceps tendon and its sheath are inflamed. So that sort of gives me that front of shoulder ache. So you know, the good news, like I mentioned before, the rotator cuffs completely intact.
Brian (4m 26s):
The labrum is no bone damage. The structural integrity of my shoulder is solid. This is purely just inflammatory. So it's just about managing it. And so I'm gonna just talk about beyond just taking an anti-inflammatory, 'cause I think that's what happens with a lot of individuals, you know, especially 40 plus they give you and and And you know, there's a time and a place for it. Meloxicam is, And you know, targets what's called a Cox two enzyme pathway to reduce inflammation and it can work, but it's also, there could be some trade-offs, could be some GI damage, gut, gut permeability issues, you know, potential kidney stress with extended use. So you know, again, I'm gonna try to take it from a natural point of view and see if that works F first.
Brian (5m 10s):
And then if I have to go to sort of go with the meloxicam after that, then maybe I'll do that. So let me show you up my sort of exact protocol that I'm gonna run. Two products. One is, and I've been taking this already, I use this grass fed collagen single ingredient and this is the sort of the foundation and I've already been taking it. One thing I noticed is on an empty stomach it's meant to be taken on. So you might, so if you are taking cartilage, excuse me, collagen, this, this is something that I just learned through research and if you're taking it before exercise, that's a good idea as well. Increases collagen synthesis in the tendons, in the cartilage.
Brian (5m 52s):
So what else does it provide? Something called glycine and proline. These are two amino acids that are most critical for cartilage and tendon repair. So that's the first product I've been taking. Next is pure encapsulations makes a joint complex. There's a lot of joint supplements out there. This was some research I've done through with, you know, on my own and also using ai. There's five ingredients in this joint complex. One is called a unna, excuse me, unmatured type two collagen is in there. And past that you're also getting 1500 milligrams of glucosamine conjoin for joint health.
Brian (6m 35s):
You're getting curcumin which can help with inflammatory issues. Boswell as well is in is is in there. And so hydrochloric acid, excuse me, IC acid is in there as well. So this lubricates the synovial fuel fluid inside the joint. So two products I'm taking. Pure encapsulations is a great supplement company brand. They're NSF certified to clean label one capsule a day. And so that's the first part of the protocol. And I am gonna use like a low dose aspirin from time to time as well. Aspirin inhibits what's called Cox one and COX two and could have some mitochondrial protective properties as as well.
Brian (7m 18s):
So 1 325 milligram uncoated tablet with food once daily is what I'm gonna also take is with the aspirin. So, so I guess you could say three things I'm taking, what really clicked for me was with those MRI findings is alongside, you know, my golf game, which is something obviously if, if you've been following, I'm a big golfer, I noticed that on the follow through I was feeling it most. So I'm gonna just probably take a little bit of a step back from swinging the club too much And you know, make sure my shoulder sort of the inflammation goes down and it allows me to play as the season comes on here. And you know, one thing I will say is I'm working not only with strengthening the joint and the joints in the shoulder and the rotator cuff is I'm gonna continue to work on TPO t-spine mobility as well.
Brian (8m 7s):
And we all know how important if you've watched any of my videos on the thoracic spine and having mobility in that. So I'll have a daily shoulder routine beyond the supplements where I'll do, you know, different movements to loosen it up, you know, loosen up the shoulder and then do some stretching. One of them's called a cross body stretch. Pretty simple. We'll just take that arm across the body sleeper stretch, sort of hard to explain, but it's gonna help improve internal rotation tolerance in the arm. I'll do arm circles. And then one thing that I did add, and if you go on my Instagram and you look, I do a, just a short example of how to use the body blade and these are, you know, it's like an ice oscillation that loads the bicep tendon through controlled low amplitude movement.
Brian (8m 54s):
So this is tendon conditioning, you'll see this in physical therapy offices a lot without aggressive loading. And maybe I'll do some more videos if you want on how to use the body blade. But if you're someone who's dealing with some shoulder issues like myself, I think daily use using this can actually really help. And this is sort of a gentle stimulus that can really accelerate healing better than sort of going hard on sporadic sessions. So past that I'll just do some activation, maybe some external rotation with the band, which I have done and showed before on my Instagram, but I can do that again. Wall slides to help activate the lower trap in the serus for scapular stability.
Brian (9m 36s):
Also thoracic rotation stretches, I've done some before and I can show you that again. And then for recovery, you know, heat before you do the routine, even just for five minutes. And then you can ice about 10 to 15 minutes after a session or after a round of golf. So I can put a link in the show notes if you're interested of this routine. And also maybe on my Instagram, try to show you some of the, the body blade and how I use that. If you go on there Now I show you just sort of one variation. So, and that's pretty much it. I, I'm still gonna do upper body training. You know, certain exercises are, are, you know, safer to train than others. I'll probably stay away from, you know, heavy bench press and overhead barbell presses, even dips.
Brian (10m 22s):
One thing I plan on adding, and I'm in the talks with a company right now is blood flow restriction training. If you haven't heard about this and you're, you've had injuries or if you're 40 50 plus, it's pretty cool because you can get meaningful muscle building a stimulus at about 20 to 30% of your max load. So it's perfect for maintaining muscle around like an inflamed joint like my shoulder that I have without, you know, aggravating it. And so I really look forward to trying that. I have not gotten those in yet. I'll probably get those in within the next week or two and I'll report back on you on blood flow restriction training and I'll probably do a whole episode with a company that I'm gonna be working with on this. So I guess the bottom line, if you, if you're a guy over 40 dealing with joint pain, could be knee, shoulder, hip I guess before just accepting a prescription drug and moving on, you know, you gotta sort of ask yourself, have you done this?
Brian (11m 14s):
Everything you needed to do to help the body heal? And I think it's even most important as we get older. So you know, things like collagen using this pre encapsulation joint complex and then a whole shoulder routine around stretching modifications and using the body blade and then making sure that doing some icing after workouts or after a round of golf, you know, nothing crazy here but you know, these are, these are protocols that I'm gonna walk myself through and then any of my clients that come through, I can help utilize it with them as well. So, you know, it's not just about training harder, it's about building a recovery foundation that lets you
Brian (11m 53s):
Keep showing up because last thing you wanna do is miss time 'cause you're injured. So anyways, that's all I wanted to drop by and tell ya today. I'll share with you how it goes on, on this process. Ex excited to introduce you to blood flow restriction training. If you haven't heard of that and if you're finding this, this useful, let me know links to the, to the description. I can put sort of my protocol in there if you want me to are below. And yeah, if you're loving these, these videos slash podcasts, I'd love a five star review, that'd be great. And then we can help get it out to more people and help people heal themselves. So thanks so much for listening and have a great rest of the day. I'll see you in the next one.
