BPC + TB-500 timing around tendon rehab, loading phase overlap worth it?

Posted by grinder265 in Healing & Recovery - 7 points, 4 comments.

Ngl my achilles has been the bane of my existence for like 8 months now. Finally got an MRI and its mid portion tendinopathy with some peritendinous fluid, no full tear at least. Im 6 weeks into a heavy eccentric loading program plus some isometric work, and the tendon still gets angry after harder sessions.

Ive run BPC solo before for smaller stuff and it seemed to help, but this thing isnt budging. Thinking about stacking in TB-500 for the loading phase, 2x a week for 4-6 weeks then dropping to once weekly. My main question is timing around the rehab work itself. Do you guys pin on the same day as your harder sessions or offset it? I keep going back and forth on whether the actin upregulation from TB-500 actually helps or just adds noise when youre already stressing the tendon mechanically.

Also curious if anyone has tried stacking GHK-Cu alongside during a real stubborn case or if thats overkill. Bloodwork has been clean, no other flags. Not looking for a miracle, just trying to stack the odds while the eccentric loading does the actual work.

Comments

• tiredmira: Same day pinning has worked better for me, but I keep the injection close to the tendon (medial approach for achilles) and time it like 30-60 min before the session. On the harder eccentric days I noticed less next-morning stiffness when I pinned pre-load vs the next day. For TB-500, the 2x/wk loading then taper is basically what most people I know run, and the actin thing does seem more useful during a real loading block rather than as a standalone. I would not add GHK-Cu at the same time thou
• grinder265: Appreciate that. The 30-60 min pre-load timing is actually where I keep flip flopping because part of me wonders if pinning right after the session lets the tendon take up whatever it needs during the early inflammatory window instead. Did you ever try post-session or did you just land on pre-load from the start? Also yeah youre probably right about skipping the GHK-Cu for now, I was just thinking out loud about throwing everything at it but isolating one variable is smarter. Ngl 8 months of th
• skeptical_cooks: To be fair the pre-session timing makes sense to me, i've done similar with BPC and felt like the soreness after was more manageable. Could just be placebo tho, hard to say with tendons since the timeline is so slow anyway. The GHK-Cu point is solid, keep it simple when youre already dealing with 8 months of stubbornness. One variable at a time or youll never know whats actually doing the work.
• grinder265: Yeah the placebo thing is honestly what gets me with this stuff, ngl. Slow timeline means you can't really tell what's working vs just the rehab catching up. I'm leaning toward pinning BPC pre-session same day and keeping TB-500 separate midweek so I'm not stacking two unknowns on top of the mechanical stress. GHK-Cu I might just hold off til after this loading block to keep it clean. Did you run BPC solo for a full tendinopathy case or more like the smaller stuff like I did?

Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.