2 years, of flox, my summary (90-95% recovered)

Hello everyone, I’ve been floxed for roughly two years now. This journey has been long and painful, full of ups and downs. The sad part is, I’m fairly certain it’s not over yet, as the wave of symptoms will likely continue. But that’s enough about the "sad" part — there are plenty of positives I want to share in this post. I’m able to live a fairly normal life. This includes activities like heavy workouts, hiking, cycling (I could run, but I hate it, so I avoid it), spending time with friends and family, working, and eating and drinking whatever I want. Occasionally, I experience some extra tendon or muscle pain, and I still take eight different supplements daily. The remaining 5-10% of healing involves eliminating the need for supplements and stopping the extra tendon pain that flares up more often than usual.

My flox journey is in my post history, but to summarize: I’ve mostly dealt with tendon and muscle issues in over 20 areas — Achilles, tibia, patella, quadriceps, hamstrings, hips, ribs, shoulders, forearms, biceps, neck, and even the jaw. My upper body has mostly recovered through normal (though very careful) lifting, while my lower body required more effort with special rehab exercises, mainly isometrics. Besides TIME, rehab has been my main healing factor so far (you can find plenty of info about it in my post history, and I’ve also linked my Instagram account where I’ve uploaded some rehab videos).

Here are the supplements I’m still taking:

  • Magnesium: 8x100mg
  • B Complex: 2 servings
  • Acetyl-L-Carnitine: 1x1000mg
  • B1 Benfotiamine: 4x300mg
  • B1 Thiamin HCL: 4x250mg
  • Vitamin C: 12x500mg
  • Q10: 200mg
  • NAC: 4x600mg

I plan to slowly reduce these, dropping one pill per week and seeing how my body responds. Additionally, I started taking 2x200mcg BPC-157 subcutaneous injections daily around 4-5 weeks ago, which has sped up my healing again. I had taken oral BPC before, which helped but was far less effective.

None of these things are magic bullets. Time and movement have been the main factors in my recovery. Just to give you an idea of my progress: at my worst, I could only walk 500 steps a day. Recently, I hiked 60k steps over three days in the Alps without any sleeves or compression gear.

When I first started lifting, I could only use machines set at the lowest weight (e.g., for lat pulldowns). Now, I can do weighted pull-ups with my 92kg bodyweight plus an extra 15kg. I’m back to squatting, deadlifting, overhead pressing, and bench pressing (my upper body is even stronger than before, though my lower body is still behind, but at least it’s pain-free and stronger than most people). I also cycled 45km in the mountains on a regular bike, whereas 3km to the grocery store at the start of my flox journey would flare me up for months.

I know not everyone might see the same rate of healing that I’ve experienced, but I hope you’ll eventually catch up and even surpass my progress. That’s the one time I’d be happy if someone beat me!

I hope you all heal well too! I’ll be sticking around here :)