Originally Posted by mravg
Hey vaseline,
Once, I was mountain biking and something popped in my tricep. It was painful. I had to walk back to my car. By the next day, my arm was swollen and a little black and blue in the tricep area. A week later, my whole arm was black down to my fingers, swollen, tight skin, hot, throbbing, stiff in the fingers etc.
Would you call that lymphedema?
Also, it sounds like you are a smart guy. It would be a shame if you went back to lurking. I hope you continue to post.
I don’t want to hijack this thread with answering this post, and was considering PM’ing you. However, for better serving the community I’ll just post my humble opinion here.
What you’re describing, to me sounds like a muscle tear (or possibly a ligament tear). When you injure tissue, the body goes through a process of repair, which includes 3 stages:
i) Acute Inflammation Phase
ii) Granulation Phase
iii) Wound Contraction Phase
I’m sure you know the details of these processes better than I do, but I’ll just briefly describe them as they do have relevance to PE.
During the first phase, white blood cells (Leukocytes) flood the area and clean all the mess made by the injured tissue, which explains the swelling and the heat at the site of inflammation. Then bottom feeders (macrophages) invade the area and digest the damaged cells, while secreting enzymes and hormones necessary to the normal healing process. This takes about 4-5 days.
Because you mention bruising, I’m assuming you ruptured some veins as well so the blood (which was initially localized to the Tricep area, gradually diffused and made the whole arm black… I’m therefore assuming there was a fair bit of internal bleeding.)
In the second phase, the Granulation phase, new blood vessels are formed and ground substance in which the cells float (interstitial fluid) floods the area. This is another reason for swelling.
At this point a different type of white blood cell is called onto the scene, which all of you have no doubt heard of: Fibroblasts. These cells make massive amounts of fibrous blocks (out of collagen fibers). This process takes 10 days.
We now enter the 3rd and final stage: Wound Contraction. Collagen is organized through a complex process into matrices of whatever type of tissue that got damaged (skin, ligament, muscle, etc.) Now these fibers shorten, and contract (which we know in PE as turtling) and with them they tighten the injured site. The fibroblasts stay at the site long after everything has cleared the area and continue strengthening the structure by secreting collagen bonds. When they’re finished their task, they’re reabsorbed by the body and the collagen bonds are returned into their expanded relaxed stage.
Now here’s the part that applies to this thread and PE. Should the injury be too severe or the fiber disruption perpetuated by abnormal activity (PE’ing again without resting enough can be a factor) or too much swelling, the fibers could heal in an elongated way or in a disorganized fashion that could create some nasty scar tissue.
This is perhaps why some advocates of ‘everyday Hanging’ like my old friend BIB made such good gains. They somehow learned to get the tissues heal in an elongated way WITHOUT triggering the formation of fibrotic scar tissue, which I assure you, is a very thin line to be training on, and potentially the holy grail of Natural PE. Now Scar tissue is mainly Type I collagen, which does not possess the mobility required to be flexible, which in turn means that it (in the case of muscles) will form a ‘knot’ within the muscle, which can be removed with deep tissue massages, and will cause localized pain at the site of the fibrosis, and in the case of PE, it will just ‘toughen’ the Tunica and the Suspensory ligament making gains come to a halt. (I think BTC_killer is a great example of PE’er who gained very heavy weights, very diligently for two years with his MaxVac without any gains whatsoever. I believe he just recently got a triple dermal graft surgery for girth, and a lig cut surgery for length. I think it’s wroth while to mention that more is usually less in PE, and less, if done with due consideration of the inflammatory process, can possibly be more.)
So it is my humble opinion, that one initiates gains, when enough inflammation is caused to trigger the inflammatory process, and hence proliferation, but only mild enough to not trigger fibrosis, and scar tissue formation. With this principle in mind, someone might train enough to heal within 24 hours, hence still gaining with a 7 days on, 0 day off regimen, while others might need more time to heal and may benefit from a 1 on, 2 off routine, much like Xeno/Babis/Shiver’s IPR protocol. What’s of absolute great importance is first, complete rest if the inflammatory process has not yet concluded, and second, limiting ‘faux girth’ build up (which I’ve now explained to be interstitial fluid, commonly referred to as lymph fluid on these boards) as much as possible.
As I’m sure many of you are already getting your panties wet about the concept of ADS’ing and how it would be absolutely perfect to help the collagen fibers heal in an elongated way…. you’re absolutely correct. There, as always, however, is a catch. The Traction device applied must be worn throughout not only the proliferation stage, but also the wound contraction phase, and it should be mild enough not to cause further inflammation. So not only should one be careful with the amount of stress applied during the PE session, one should keep in mind, that if the traction device is causing further inflammation, it is in fact hurting your efforts. Again another example that the whole ‘no pain no gain’ mentality wont work in NPE.
p.s. mravg, and Mr. Happy,thanks for your compliments, greatly appreciated. In regards to your question, Lymphedema, in your case would have happened if your swelling remained for more than 15-20 days due to blockage or damage to your lymphatic systems which deliver the interstitial fluid back into the blood stream.
So no I wouldn’t think you had lymphedema, and would say that your swelling, as I explained was a part of the natural healing process.
While promoting concepts of All Day/Night Clamping (ADC/ANC), most people ignore the fact that due to constriction that is applied while clamped, hydrostatic pressure far exceeds the Osmotic pressure, causing plasma to seep out of the atrial side of the capillaries. The continual presence of the constrictor at the base of the penis, forbids the lympathic vessels to properly return this fluid to the blood stream and hence leading to fibrosis.
Thanks for bearing with me with the long thread.
Vkay
