It depends on whether you're talking all around 'general' pain, or pain in a specific part of each one or more fingers (such as a specific joint).

Get some fresh ginger, and if possible turmeric, and blend an inch or so of them up with some water.

Increase intake of EPA/DHA--1.5 to 3 grams combined. You can get an AA/EPA ratio test done.

It depends on whether you're talking all around 'general' pain, or pain in a specific part of each one or more fingers (such as a specific joint). No one can diagnose you over a forum, but it sounds likely you're suffering from general inflammation. My bias is diet, so that's the advice I can give you for recovery and prevention of inflammation.

Short-term advice: Up your vegetable and spice intake. Get some fresh ginger, and if possible turmeric, and blend an inch or so of them up with some water. Drink with a fat-containing meal, or with an oil-based supplement (fish oil, for example). Do this daily until the pain resolves, and afterwards if you'd like as a preventative measure.

Long-term advice: Increase intake of EPA/DHA--1.5 to 3 grams combined (NOT 1.5 grams 'fish oil', which may be only 500 mg EPA/DHA) per day is a good amount, though your individual biochemistry will determine your true need. You can get an AA/EPA ratio test done, if you're interested, though it's probably not worth the expense. If you're on any blood-thinning medication, do consult your doctor before taking EPA/DHA in large amounts as they inhibit platelet aggregation.

You are what you eat. Certain amounts of inflammation are inevitable in rock climbing (or any form of exercise), but you can minimize inflammation's effects and speed its recovery with the right tools.

I never recommended he keep climbing, and I specifically mentioned I can only address the nutritional side of things.

Ginger and turmeric are far from "unproven". Quite the contrary in fact, a quick search of PubMed will bring up hundreds of articles in relation to the ways they affect our biochemistry, including the down-regulation of inflammatory cytokines and transcription factors, the resolution of wounds and cutaneous injury, and the protection of connective tissues.

Here's a highly-relevant article on the effects of curcumin (one of the active compounds in turmeric) on human tenocytes (tendon cells):

http://www.jbc.org/...nt/286/32/28556.long



Here are some of the findings:

1. Curcumin suppresses the pathways which cause tenocyte degradation, pathways which "affect normal tissue remodeling and lead to the development of tendinopathy."

2. Curcumin reduces local inflammation of tenocytes, reducing COX-2 expression. Reduced COX-2 expression reduces pain.

3. Curcumin stimulates tenocytes and enhances transcription of tendon-associated collagens.

4. Curcumin exerts no toxic effects, and no dose-limiting toxicity.

Final statement in the study: "[C]urcumin might have prophylactic potential for the treatment of tendinitis."



This is not voodoo, it's science, and there are very specific reasons I made the recommendations I did. I am well-versed in the biochemistry of inflammation, including acute and systemic, and from a research-based standpoint I can attest that ginger, turmeric, and EPA/DHA will all produce measurable change in levels of inflammation, improve resolution time, and be protective against future injury, including for the tendons.

Just about every supplement that ever became popular was supported by a body of pre-clinical research that suggested that the supplement ought to have some benefit—that's why they became popular in the first place. But just about every one that ever reached the clinical trial stage was found to have no benefit or to be harmful. Until a supplement has shown consistent benefit to hard endpoints in randomized controlled trials in humans, published in high-quality peer-review journals, the supplement is unproven.

This is a blanket statement with little truth. Your assumption that in vitro tests on human cells offer no worth would be a revelation to the bioscience research community, who use this method because it allows them to much more easily control for variables and determine the exact mechanisms of action. It is exceedingly hard to perform biochemical research in vivo in humans, not least of which is because many studies require sacrifice of the test subject in order to determine effects. For obvious reasons, this is not an option for humans, and this limits the researchers' options.

What I am curious about is why you choose to disregard a huge host of research in favor of the argument "[it] is unproven". With these words, you don't actively engage in debate, you step away from it assuming that nothing can supersede this premise. You don't actively search PubMed to find papers to support your argument, you simply presume they do not exist, and with that presumption you order the execution.

You can choose to be paralyzed by the fear that extensive in vitro human cell research and in vivo animal research will lead to no results in humans, or you can choose to believe that this research is pertinent to humans. I do not doubt that when a double-blind placebo-controlled trial is performed in a large human sample, the results will be attenuated compared to rodent models and human cell cultures, yet I also do not doubt that the phytochemical constituents of plants play important roles in human physiological processes, and to ignore their important role in human health is dangerous.

I am more than happy to debate the relationship of nutrition and health, but everybody will benefit more if you provide something more substantial than "it isn't proven". By your standard, even rest has not been 'proven' as a method to repair tissue damage as most of what we know about the healing processes of the body have come from in vitro human cell studies and in vivo rodent studies. Anecdotally, we know that human tissue does repair itself over time, presumably by the same mechanisms as elucidated from research. Anecdotally, we also know that the phytochemicals in ginger and turmeric, and the preformed long-chain omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, lead to reductions in levels of systemic inflammation, also presumably along the same biochemical pathways elucidated from research.

In the whole complexity of human biochemistry, it is certain that there will be other pathways which attenuate the results observed from research, factors which improve or worsen healing. Yet we are also certain that the pathways observed from research are not irrelevant, and that modulating them will produce physiological change.

Textbook example of a Gish gallop.

Jay