BPC-157 arginate salt oral vs injectable for a stubborn Achilles tendon

Posted by leah_vo2max in Healing & Recovery - 1 points, 4 comments.

Been dealing with a low grade Achilles issue for like 4 months now, right at the insertion point. MRI showed mild tendinopathy with some peritendon thickening, no tear. PT has helped, eccentrics daily, slowly loading it back up. Still nags at the end of the day though.

I've been running injectable BPC-157 at 250 mcg 2x a day for about 6 weeks now, mostly subq near the tendon. Some days it feels better, some days same. To be fair it's hard to tell what's the peptide vs just the loading program doing the work.

Saw the profile for the arginate salt oral form and got curious. If the half life is around 4 hours either way, would oral even be worth swapping to mid rehab, or does the local delivery from the inject actually matter for something like tendon tissue that's poorly vascularized?

Also wondering if anyone has stacked the oral arginate form on top of the injectable, like a morning oral dose plus a local inject later in the day. Or is that just splitting the difference for no reason.

Comments

• rachel_ketogen: For me the local inject always felt more useful than oral for tendon stuff, but that could just be placebo since I knew it was going right near the spot. A poorly vascularized tendon is a real issue though, blood flow is already the bottleneck. Subq near the insertion makes more sense to me than relying on systemic delivery through the gut. Half life being similar doesnt tell you much about tissue exposure at the actual site. If youre 6 weeks in and only getting marginal improvement, the issue
• leah_vo2max: Yeah fair point on half life not really telling you anything about tissue exposure, thats kinda where my head was at too. The local delivery just feels like it makes more sense even if I cant prove it. Eccentrics are heavy slow, 3 sets of 15 with a slow tempo, been doing that for like 8 weeks now. Probably worth bumping frequency or load at this point honestly, the tendon tolerates a lot more than it used to. You said the inject felt more useful, were you doing subq near the spot too or did yo
• nina489: Yeah honestly the local vs systemic thing was my first thought too. Blood flow to the Achilles is just bad, no way around it. For me injectable close to the spot seemed to do more than oral for a similar issue, but I also could not tell if that was real or just because I knew where it was going, you know? Six weeks in with only marginal improvement though, maybe you need to push the duration or look at dosing? Or check if something else is slowing healing (sleep, nutrition, that kind of thing)
• leah_vo2max: Yeah the local thing is exactly why I kept the subq, figured getting it near the tendon beats hoping it makes it through the bloodstream. To be fair placebo is real, I can't rule that out. Eccentrics are heavy slow, 3 sets of 15 with a backpack loaded up around 20kg, been doing those since week 2. Sleep is usually 7ish hours, diet is decent, nothing crazy but I eat enough protein. Maybe I just need to suck it up and run it longer than 6 weeks, idk.

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