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Proximal Hamstring Tendinopathy is a horrible condition affecting athletes and non-athletes alike. If you fall victim to the misguided information that is circulating the internet, symptoms can persist for months, sometimes years and start impacting your everyday life.
This podcast is for those looking for clear, evidence-based guidance to overcome Proximal Hamstring Tendinopathy. Hosted by Brodie Sharpe, an experienced physiotherapist and content creator, this podcast aims to provide you with the clarity & control you desperately need.
Each episode brings you one step closer to finally overcoming your proximal hamstring tendinopathy. With solo episodes by Brodie, success stories from past sufferers and professional interviews from physiotherapists, coaches, researchers and other health professionals so you get world class content.
Tune in from episode #1 to reap the full benefits and let's get your rehabilitation back on track!
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On today's episode, we have a PHT success story with Brooke Benton. Welcome to the podcast that gives you the most up-to-date, evidence-based information on PHT rehab. My name is Brodie. I am an online physio, but I've also managed to overcome my own battle with PHT in the past. And now I've made it my mission to give you all the resources you need to overcome this condition yourself. So with that, let's dive into today's episode. Brooke Benton is on the podcast today to share a pretty raw story and a very vulnerable rehab journey that she's had with PHT, both from a physical and emotional standpoint. She's been gracious enough to walk us through that whole thing to help you with your own PHT rehab. By ways of background, she's a personal trainer and exercise physiologist. She talks through in this interview, her qualifications and directions that her career has taken over that period of time, but has dealt with a lot of pain, a lot of trauma. I initially found out about Brooke as she posted on the PhD Facebook group that she had PhD for two years. She'd tried everything and she wasn't 1% better. And then we jumped on a injury chat and took it from there. It has been a journey of exploration, learning a lot about this injury with curiosity, finding out what works and encapsulating a whole kind of wellness, holistic aspect to her rehab. So you'll take away a lot from this. Let's dive into Brooke's story right now. Brooke, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast. I love your podcast, Brody. You're doing great work. Thank you. Well, start with a nice compliment. Let's talk about you. If people aren't familiar with you and your work, can you give us an introduction about yourself, your fitness background and career background and that sort of stuff? Sure, sure, sure. I'd be happy to. So my name is Brooke Benton and I got involved in the fitness industry in 1999 as a group fitness instructor initially then becoming a personal trainer and declared exercise and sports science as my undergrad major. I just was. fascinated with fitness. I loved movement and decided to continue on to graduate school, staying in the field. Interestingly enough, I went to grad school at University of Houston and for an elective outside of my health and human performance department, I took a class in sociology and happened to be one of like 20 students in Brene Brown's second semester at U of H, which is pretty rad. But got my master's then. decided I just, I love teaching. I like working with students. And so pursued a leadership role with higher education and campus recreation. So here in the States, colleges and universities that have a facility outside of athletics, hire professional staff to provide programs for students, faculty and staff. So that's what I did. I was the fitness director at a couple of Texas universities. and I would teach a semester long course of fitness instructor and training. And so that's for students that are interested in becoming fitness instructors or personal trainers. It doesn't have to be part of their major, but I would teach the class that teaches in basic biomechanics, exercise science, and practical skills of how you actually lead the workouts. And so to do that, I needed to keep myself current on what are the current trends, what is everybody into. And at the time, Pavel Totselin had recently introduced kettlebell training to the United States. And I knew this is going to be in fitness, the greatest thing since sliced bread, because it's high intensity, but low impact. And who doesn't want that? People who have done high impact and high intensity work and can't do the impact anymore, that's what they really miss. It's not missing exercise. It's, well, how do I get that without the pounding on the joints? And so kettlebell. Boom shakalaka, this is it. And I kind of put the cart before the horse. I made one of the first five kettlebell DVDs on the American market and I squatted my swings and we used light kettlebells. And so biomechanically it's sound, it's a cardio workout, but to properly do kettlebell swings, you need a deadlift base. And so mea culpa, you make mistakes, but it was one of the first kettlebell videos out there and it wasn't the worst of them. So that kind of got me on the map as a fitness personality. And I got picked up by several endorsements and began fitness modeling and making a lot of workout videos and things took an ugly turn. And I didn't see it coming as a 20 something year old that would make workout videos in my sports bras and then chum with the guys and throw down drinks. And It all just seemed like good fun doing my work and work hard, play hard. And I was a 20 something good looking woman in a sports bra and everybody, everybody besides me could see where this is going. Right. Um, it's not gonna, I needed to be prepared for things to, to get ugly with male female relationships, um, and a work setting and I wasn't prepared for it. And it wrecked me. and I stuck with the jobs for longer than I should have and ended up abruptly closing my business, changing my email, changing my phone number, moving, completely ghosting before ghosting was a thing. I totally went off the grid, changed from doing the content to going back to an executive role. I took a job as executive director of Healthy Living. for a hospitality company. So it was like, shut that door, let's move into the next door, full steam ahead with an executive director role. And then COVID happened. Boom, the world changed. And my kids are on their devices too much. And my husband and I are both working. It's like something's got to give. So I quit my job and went from, as you can tell, wearing all the hats with fitness. I was like the blossom of the fitness industry. There was all these different roles that I had done to now. Just being a mom, pots and pans, kids, and a whole lot of running, a whole lot of running. That's what filled this void that I wasn't willing to face of all the professional stuff that had just happened. It was like avoid, avoid. And now here you are, like deal with your emotions, deal with everything that went down or just run a lot. And I chose the latter. Yeah. Did you see that at the time? Did you? see the running as an outlet to sort of avoid those emotions in that past? Or was it just something you're just compelled to do? I think running will always be something that I'm compelled to do. I think the world's divided into the people who love running and the people who don't understand why people would run if somebody's not chasing them. And those of us who love it, really, really love it. But I did know that this wasn't just fun running. There were... conditions I would place on it. I could never just go on a recreational jog. It was, I need to run 50 miles a week. If I'm running on my own, it has to be a sub seven minute mile pace. If I'm pushing one child in the stroller, sub 730, both children, sub 745, trail running sub eight minutes. And these are the rules, you have to stick with it. And so it was very regimented and I knew that... there's something behind that. This isn't just trying to be the best runner out there. And it felt good. On the inside, it felt good every time I would hit that goal and meet the pace that I wanted to meet and make the miles that I wanted to do. And of course, as a woman, there's also pressure to look a certain way, get smaller, get smaller, get smaller. And I was, I dwindled down to a really small size and I felt great. I'm fast, I'm skinny, and everything is fine. Until it wasn't. Um, can we talk about the injuries, the, the PhD, the onset, like talk us through that time. Yeah. So from the story I've already told, you can tell the conditions were set for PhD to happen at any time it could have happened in any of those runs. And I'll tell you the one specific instance where it did happen, but it could have been any of this. You've said before on your podcast that injuries happen. when load exceeds capacity. And I was loading my tendons with more than they could handle. And I was doing predominantly running, not strength training. I didn't have, I didn't make time to do strength training or other exercises. When I had just this amount of time before having to get back to moming it, I chose to just run, to just run and run harder. So my lower body strength was running hard or running hills. And, and, So as I was running, I was just berating myself. And this voice in my head is, I knew there was an upper limit. I knew that up here, that there's an upper limit. But one voice is saying, caution, danger, don't go there. Don't exceed this. And another voice is saying, push harder, you middle school misfit. Push harder, you cut from every sports team loser. Push harder, you sexual object. Push harder, you fimbop. Push harder, you slut. And that was the one that I was hearing. So there was no limit. There was no limit. I was gonna keep beating my best and continue to do that. And I could do it through running. And so it was a way of both feeling great about myself and a way of attacking myself. It was very much two sides of the same sword. And the injury actually happened in a half marathon in February of 2020. two, I was running the cow town half marathon and I used to run that race every year because in 2017 I was 30 weeks pregnant with my daughter and I ran that half marathon. And so I had so many memories of having a fully grown child in my belly and running that particular race. And so every year I would do the 13.1, the cow town half. And I love that race. And it was then in 2022 when I was running the cow town half marathon. I believe it was between mile nine and mile 10 that it was a sudden sharp pain at the origin of my hamstrings on the left side where the hamstrings insert into the glute. And I wouldn't stop running. From the story you've already heard, of course she's not going to stop running. And so I'm peg legging it along, dragging that leg, dropping the F-bomb, I think under my breath. I hope it was under my breath so that it wasn't offending other runners. But It was a miserable rest of the run. I'm crying as I'm running, but get through the finish line. And that was the commencement of my experience with PhD. What happened after the event? Like, did you consider yourself an injured runner? Like, did you just say, Oh, let me just run this off. It will go away. Or was it something a bit more serious? Like I need to pay attention to this. I need to rehab this. What was your intentions? Like probably every runner who experiences PhD are First instinct is denial. And so we want to think we can just run through it. And I tried, I would try to go on runs and it would just level me to the pavement. Like it was so much pain that I just have to stop and then try to sit down on the curb on the street, but then it hurt to sit also. And emotionally, it was a nightmare. Cause now it was as if that voice in my head that said, push harder you weak, fill in the blank, was then saying, that's what I thought. That's what I thought. That's how weak you are. You know, I knew this was gonna beat you. And I did get a scan. I know you're kind of like, scans don't always show the full picture and sometimes they show it on the other side that's not even injured. But I was so certain at the time that this was a complete evulsion. There's no way that the hamstrings even still connected to the phone. That I got an MRI and it just showed partial thickening. of the hamstrings tendon, like partial thickening. And the orthopedic said, I think if you would take three Advil a day for 10 days, you'd probably be fine. It was like the biggest insult of my life because no taking three Advil for 10 days when this is like worse than childbirth, that's not going to solve the problem. Although I did try it and I spiraled. After this, I... It was like, well, if I can't run and then my daughter started kindergarten and I'm at home by myself and I just don't know where my identity is. I started drinking and so I ended up just making things worse that now not only can you not run, but you're drinking alcohol that's just like putting gasoline on the fire. I felt really sorry for myself and just went through a pretty low time. But in the years or like even around this time, did you ever consider the your mind and habits weren't really serving you that well? Did you ever consider potentially like getting therapy and working through these issues that were you were battling this dichotomy in your mind? Did you try to address that in other ways? At the time. my thought was if this hamstrings, this injury, this PHT was just better, everything would be better. Like it was the only problem. I didn't want to think that any of the rest of it really was affecting me. It was just this hamstrings. And so what I ended up doing, because you're, if you're going to rise up, you're going to rise up. You're not going to let yourself stay at rock bottom that long. And so I decided to take into control what I could control. Yes, I did get some professional therapy and I also decided, let me stack the dominoes up that I can stack up. Right now running is off the table. Maybe it won't always be off the table, but I'm gonna go to the step mill and do step mill workouts because I can do that and I can do HIIT workouts, even burpees and all of this, totally fine, no problem. I started doing light dumbbell workouts and adding intervals in book endorsement to write a book for Hearst that was called Lift Light, Get Lean. I did use the light dumbbells and made the book that did really, really well for them. I start getting things back together physically and then I'm like, but you still got a ways to go with wellness. I started with making my bed. I'm like, man, if I will make this bed every morning, then at least the end of the day, if everything else goes wrong. I've got a well-made bed and that's something. From there, about three weeks after making my bed, I'm like, you know what else? If I would stop drinking, like not just let's drink after five o'clock or drink after the kids go to bed or only drink on the weekends. I didn't have to think about alcohol because wellness is one of my core values. And it doesn't feel aligned with that as long as I'm drinking alcohol. What if I just stopped drinking completely and I did? And now it's been. over two years since I've had a drink and never missed it at all. I had thought about stopping drinking in the past, but this time I knew it's not benefiting my life at all. There's zero benefit of drinking alcohol. I don't need willpower because you don't need willpower to stop doing something you do not want to do. I didn't want to do it anymore. I quit drinking. I started managing my stress. Eventually I came around. habits up, not just the physical fitness, because in the past it all had been about exercise. I started working on real wellness with all of that. And in time, like, okay, the thing left is that what happened professionally that went against my values and has been eating me up on the inside. It's been eating me up ever since then. I got to go back and address that. was I went back and I'm like, this happened. I wish it wouldn't have happened, but it happened and kind of left it there. The injury didn't get any better. The injury did not get better when I was just going back and saying, this happened, but I wish it wouldn't have. If only it wouldn't have. If only I could change that and just ruminating myself to staying stuck. When things really took a turn for the better was when I embraced self-compassion and this. I want to tell you the magic of self-compassion here. TMS is a real thing when the pain you are experiencing comes from the brain, all pain, whether you get kicked in the testicles or you stub your toe, it sends a message to your brain that I've been stubbed or I've been kicked, and the brain then sends the pain to that area. The brain was causing the pain in my hamstrings. I know it was. And there's structural problems too. We saw it on MRI, I saw it at a scan that I went at another place. There were structure, obviously all the running I was doing and the pace I was doing it and load exceeding capacity, there was real structural damage. But there was also emotional damage, load exceeded capacity with my emotional, with what I was dealing with. So I needed to expand my emotional capacity. How would I do that? I go. back to what was bothering me, back what was eating me up, and I deliver radical self-compassion to that young woman. And I tell myself, I wish this wouldn't have happened. It did happen, and I bet that was hard. It wasn't an impossible situation. Nothing is an impossible situation, but you were gravely unprepared for it. You were gravely unprepared. You handled it poorly, and you're not gonna do that again. You're a good mom. You're a good person. You're a good wife. You're a good professional and you deserve some grace. You would give grace to anybody else who experienced this. You deserve some too. And I'm going to love you through this. And that changed everything. The story of you going through this, you know, running a lot to sort of escape emotions, sort of like this mental health outlet, just trying to hold on for dear life while you have these two competing stories in your head. It's kind of like, I like to think of it if there was a tendon overload, and there were being some sort of mechanical biomechanical signals being sent up to your brain to then evaluate that as data. The brain does a whole bunch of other things to assess the relevance and the threat level of the situation at hand. And then it's the brain's job and to send the signals down to that nervous system to produce a certain output. And it's like, how amplified do we want to dial this up? Or how much do we want to dampen this down? And once this tendon sort of presents itself as an injury, or once there's a little trigger there that sparks pain, your current, well, your situation of, okay, it's we're training a lot, but we also have a lot of pressure on ourselves. Perfectionists, we're running fast. We're running hard. We are. really, really hard on ourselves. Like all of those combinations of things would just mean to the, if you were to develop any injury, it's going to be ramped up all the way, which kind of leads to why there was such a mismatch between the symptoms you are experiencing and the, the signs shown up on scans of it just being like a mild sort of tendinopathy. But the brain turns it and dials it all the way up. One of the reasons for that is because your default mode, your brain's default state was hypervigilance, anxiety, high area, like really, really hard on yourself. And it could like recovery can't happen unless we address those things. We, we has to be all encompassing. Like you say wellness, which I think is a, is a great term for it. It's considering the mechanical, the biomechanical, but also the psychological, the social, um, being. they do mention in like, think away your pain in the book that mentions TMS, there's plenty of TMS books out there. But one of the personality traits that leads someone more susceptible to developing this sort of condition is like the perfectionists, the ones that are like highly responsible for others, you mentioned you put a lot of pressure on yourself as a mother, but also very hard on yourself. If you have if you're a perfectionist, you've got a lot of response. If you a lot of people are responsible for you, and you're very, very hard on yourself. It's a personality trait that leads to like TMS developing. I think your history encapsulates a lot of that. I think the past history with all of that previous career stuff really would take a toll. It would lead to a lot of ruminating thoughts. It would lead to a lot of suppressed emotions. It will lead to a lot of narratives around how you see yourself and your identity. And so I think it was all encapsulating and bound to happen. Yeah, Brody. I hope every one of your listeners just heard everything you just said because it's so, so very true. And another book on TMS is called Mind Your Body by Nicole Sacks. And that was just released last month. I love that one. I love to think away your pain and the journal that goes along with it. I found those very helpful. An analogy that Nicole Sacks gave in Mind Your Body that I just thought was brilliant. was picturing a building on fire and the smoke detector starts going off. And so what do you do? You call the firefighters and when the firefighters get there, they blast that smoke alarm with their water hoses. That's what happens when we only treat the symptoms and not the root cause of the fire, which was all of these suppressed emotions. But the symptoms were real. There was a fire. But but we have to treat the mind and the body. It all works together. You helped me so much, so very much, when we had a consultation and you said, okay, you do strength, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, well, I use some light dumbbells and then I do some intervals. You're like, but heavy strength. And I'm an exercise physiologist, but still it was like you had just turned on a light bulb that I hadn't even thought, oh, I need to be doing low reps. and really putting some meat on those barbells and doing some deadlifts and prone hamstring curls and doing serious strength training, which was not part of my routine at that point. That was huge. After three months of doing the heavy strength training with a loaded barbell, doing prone hamstring curls, and another exercise I do regularly is stand about a half an arm's distance from a wall and put the opposite foot on the wall, hold a dumbbell in that hand, a heavy dumbbell or a kettlebell in the hand of the leg that's on the wall and then do a deadlift with the grounded leg. So it's a cross-lateral, you've got your loaded on the opposite side of the leg that's grounded, but do that deadlift. It feels very strong, very stable and I think that's really, really helped with the recovery. So those exercises, man, just some deadlifts, some prone hamstring curls with real weight on it. on it. And and that particular deadlift exercise as well has been really, really helpful. Can you get it? Give us a sense of timeframes when it came to you're trying everything not really getting anywhere like, you know, I digged up a Facebook post that you put in the Facebook group about, you know, I've tried everything for several years, I haven't got 1% better. I've tried this, I've tried that I've tried that. Can you give us a list of things that you did try beforehand? didn't work. Um, we'll start with that. Sure. So I had tried physical therapy and I think physical therapy is fantastic if you have the right physical therapist that understands the condition. Um, it didn't work for me, but again, I was dealing with some psychological issues that weren't addressed through that either. So no fault to the physical therapist. I tried chiropractic therapy, a Rosti, dry needling, cupping. Um, What else? Cold therapy, hot therapy. And I still do, I really do enjoy a ice bath. So I still do some cold therapy, but it wasn't helping at the time, the contrast therapy. I did a corticosteroid injection just one time. It was not ultrasound guided. So they might as well have just randomly picked a spot to try to do that. But those were all examples of everything that I had tried. And like I said, when I said I was doing strength training. I was doing the kind of strength training that I enjoy some light dumbbells and throwing in some plyometrics and we're not really talking about the heavy strength training that you then introduced me to. So when I went on my soapbox on Facebook and like, golly, this has been two years and it hasn't gotten 1% better. I think partly I was irritated that it still was hurting at all because I felt like by now it should be better and why isn't it? But it had to have gotten some better because I was running some. decided to take on triathlons because at least then I could do sprint distance and the run is only a very small portion of that and I've got no impact with the swim low impact with the bike and then I could get through the run So it probably was an embellishment to say not any better But I think part of that next year. So this past year has been huge now I can climb stairs with zero pain at all. I can do the shoe off test with zero pain at all. So The pain really is manageable now. Part of it was the brain processing trauma. Also recognizing tendons regenerate with blood, good blood supply and the right nourishment. I have to believe within eight months, that tissue can regenerate. The connective tissue can regenerate. Muscle tissue regenerates faster, but this doom and gloom that I'm injured and I'm always gonna be injured and maybe I need surgery Yeah, you know, all of these extreme Western medicine things that we can do, steps we can take, things we can try, maybe you don't need that because your brain and body work together and it wants to heal you. Like your body wants to be healed and so you have to believe. I had to believe that I could be healed. And so now over three years post-injury and doing so much better, I do have some on the opposite side too. It never was as bad as the... The left side, the left one was the original one injured. The right side has some flare ups, but it's manageable to do all of it. In fact, last week I just returned to the Cowtown marathon, the half marathon for the first time since the one where PhD onset. And I don't mean to get emotional on your podcast, but it was so emotional to be able to run that same half marathon again. minimal pain. I applied a little bit of topical Advil before the run. I find that really does help me quite a bit. When I passed mile 10, it was still flying. Then mile 11, it felt great. 12 and 13.1. I did cry at the finish line, but it was tears of joy. It was so joyful to be able to be back at that race and to be able to run it pretty well. I just felt great about it. Well done. Yeah. Congratulations for that. I think that's a huge... achievement to not only return back to a race, but back to a race that means a lot to you. Um, it has all that history attached to it. And a lot of people can, like they, they just focus on what they haven't got back yet. It's like, yeah, but I didn't like, I returned to the race, but wasn't as fast as I wanted or like, yeah, it's a half marathon, but it's not a full marathon. Like, you know, a lot of people tend to Some people tend to gravitate towards what they still don't have yet, rather than like celebrating every single win along the way and you know, having that mindset, being grateful, like gratitude is a very, very powerful emotion. And the fact that you are extremely grateful, tears of joy, all that sort of stuff is only just going to be better for your recovery because as we've discussed, the brain has a very big influence on your recovery and so if it's flooded with optimism and happiness and joy, then it's setting the right conditions. Like your default mode of your brain is no longer this anxiety driven pain amplification space. It's now dampening a lot of those signals and bringing on joy and all that sort of stuff. So a great attitude. I was going to ask though, time frame wise, when it comes to the, you know, several years of not really seeing anything. We mentioned two big shifts. One of the big shifts was focusing on wellness and focusing on addressing your past traumas and really confronting those suppressed emotions. And then you mentioned the heavy strength training is another big component to help with the, you know, overall recovery, which one came first? Like how did that, how was that storyline from then onwards? Yeah. That's a great question. So. Back in January of 2024 was when my book, Sweat with Brooke Benton was published. And in that I address giving yourself grace and recovering and being mothering yourself, really giving yourself some compassion. And that was when I was like, I can go back and touch the things that I wasn't willing to go there. It was just shutting it off, like as if it didn't happen. I was willing to go back and acknowledge this happened, but too bad, which it didn't. So it wasn't completely there with the radical self-compassion that I needed to. It was the next month that you and I had the call. So in February then of 2024, we're talking about one year ago right now, was when you suggested the heavy strength training. I started it the day after we got off of that call. So It didn't really change anything real, real quickly. I think it was three months before I really noticed a measurable difference with that. It was in that same timeframe that my husband and I took a vacation. I'm like a ball of nerves. Is this book going to sell? Is anybody going to read it? I got to move the book. He told me, what if you just accept that you put your heart into this book, you did a great job with it, let it do what it's going to do, and you just train? do your heavy strength training, do your triathlon training. When you do things athletically, you're your happiest and it inspires other people without you preaching at them. Just do your thing, because you do it great and you're happy. I'm like, oh, that would be really cool. Thank you, yes, it doesn't pay very well, but that sounds fantastic. And it took the burden off to have to perform or sell or any of this. Just... just train. And so I focused a lot on my track lawn training, improved my swimming, worked on the heavy strength training. And it was then that I started, and I also had just gotten the life coaching certification too, which made me familiar with what tension myositis syndrome was. I didn't even know what it was before then. And that's what turned the light bulb on. Oh, hey, this maybe isn't working enough that I'm just willing to tap into this happened and I wish it didn't happen. Okay, let's love that woman. Let's love that woman where she is now because she's the same you here. And that was a big change in my self-compassion and my curiosity. I'm very honest with myself and I'm willing to try things. And so all of that played a part in over the next several months getting much, much better to where then I wasn't just. you can run, but only if you take it slow because you don't want to poke the bear. You don't want to, uh, you know, end up back where you were initially with, with PhD. It's like, well, no, I think I can run further than this. And then I was, as I was building that, that capacity, I'm like, Oh, and I think I can run faster than this. And by September I was running almost a sub 25 K again, which is, I thought that might never happen. Uh, So amazing. I still feel the pain, right? I still feel some pain where the hamstrings insert into the glute, especially on the left side. But now I'm curious, will I for much longer? It could get better. It could go away altogether. And if it doesn't, I'm okay. I mean, I'm good, but I'm curious. It might. I've come so far. Now the only thing that really, really bothers it is sitting on hard surfaces. That's just. Oh, that's brutal. But I'm also like 9% body fat. So it could be sitting on hard surfaces is just hard because I've got a bony sit bone. Yeah. Do you ever notice that there's any fluctuation in symptoms with non-mechanical behaviors? Do you ever find on like a stressful day, there's more pain on a day where you're more calm and optimistic, there's less pain or any particular patterns around that? Brody, I'm so glad that you asked that because Absolutely. That is like the loudest resounding yes. I recently had a hard conversation with my parents and for the whole week after that, it was a flare up. I know that it was the people you want to please the most and I'm quite a people pleaser and who I want to please the most is my parents. When that went ugly, yeah, the symptoms of PHT flared back up again. when the barometric pressure is low, before we get a good storm, I feel it's a real flare up. It is a real pain. After I've had any kind of a virus that's caused overall inflammation, I seem to have little flare ups then. Like after I had COVID, it seemed to flare up. But I do think, so those are things that poke the bear. Some things that are helping, I have... I've taken an anti-inflammatory diet. Like I said, I don't drink alcohol, but I've also upped my protein. I always thought that, oh my goodness, this is just the nutrition, the diet industry trying to push everybody to be on supplements, but I wouldn't have this much muscle mass on me if I wasn't getting enough protein, so I don't need any more protein. It's like, well, it wouldn't hurt you to dial it up a little bit and let's just see what happens. So since I have gotten to this really good point, I have been supplementing with protein, I'm still curious just how absorbable collagen peptides are, but I do combine that with vitamin C. Just hoping it couldn't hurt, but I'm hoping that then that's stacking the odds higher that it is actually doing something. I take British chain amino acids. I always say a whole foods diet is best, but no diet is so good that supplements cannot help it. And the supplements are so great that a whole foods diet won't. you know, help that too. Yeah. Appreciate those 1%. As I was listening, like I had Keith Barr, who's a researcher on last month, but I've, I just listened to another podcast episode with him yesterday and he was just mentioning the research that's slowly emerging out there with supplementing collagen and vitamin C. And if possible, trying to coordinate that like half hour to an hour before your workouts to help with tendon synthesis and recovery of tendons and tendinopathies and those sorts of things. Research isn't definitive, but I think it's the best in the world is starting to lean towards that direction. At worst, it's indifferent. There's no way that it could be harmful. I love that. It's not like it's breaking the bank. A little bit each month to put some collagen peptides in my coffee or mix it with my This isn't hurting me and it might be helping me. So there might be some, um, psychosomatic benefits there if nothing else. But I agree. Mason research is showing some promising, promising hope for attendance with collagen and vitamin C. If you've, if someone's like injured or non injured and they find themselves in the same emotional wreck, like you said you were in, uh, conflicting emotions, just sort of running to suppress some of emotions as well. Um, What's some steps they can take to start their healing journey? Yeah. Oh, thank you for asking me that. I, I feel like I'm an authority, not because I'm a life coach and a personal trainer and an exercise physiologist. I am those things, but having gone through what I've been through, I can also empathize and tell you what helped me go from wigged out mess, the hot mess, hot mess express. to feeling a truly holistic wellness has enveloped me and it's who I am. I know that it can happen for them because it happened for me. And I wrote a book called 10 Minutes to Slim and Sober that goes through daily habits to set those dominoes up straight. And those habits include getting a good night's sleep every night. I mean, there is very, there are very few things more transformative. than getting a good night's rest. And when you don't get a good night's rest, the whole rest of the day is messed up, not only because your brain can't function properly, but because your mood is altered, everything is just in disarray. So a good night's sleep, strong social connections. Strong social connections are ginormous in this day and age where we're getting our social connections from a digital device. From this, this is where I'm communicating with people or just scrolling, doom scrolling through Facebook. That's not a real social connection. So... surrounding yourself, spending time with people who understand you and who you understand that it's mutually beneficial. As stress management, we all deal with eustress, good stress and distress. It both causes stress in the nervous system. And so having a breathing practice and being kind to yourself, my good friend and a contributor in the book, her name is Dr. Ayla Donlin. She has a meditation practice that's super simple of just inhale, calm through the body, exhale, calm through the mind. And just repeating that, inhale, calm through the body, exhale, calm through the mind. It helps a lot. She says, place a hand on the belly and the other hand on your heart. I do it in mountain pose, going to extended mountain pose, back to mountain pose. However you wanna do it, that breathing practice is transformative. It also helps to get your diet in check. When we're putting garbage into our mouths, it doesn't just come right out the other end. It affects our brain. It affects everything. So predominantly fiber and high protein, food from the earth, whether it's vegan or just plant forward, that will definitely, definitely help with all of this. I highly recommend trying to get rid of alcohol completely. I don't think it has any benefit in our lives. I think... So much of our suffering is from that toxic chemical that we're ingesting. And so I think just drinking good old fashioned water or sparkling water if you want to, but not drinking alcohol, these are all tips to help what you can control because you can't control everything. You get injured, you're gonna be injured. But my mantra is there's always a way. There's always a way to find a brighter place. And so these things everybody can do. All the things I just described. anybody can do them. And it was the whole message of my most recent book. I think there's, that's a good message about focusing on what you can control as opposed to what you can't. I picked that up when you were talking about your book, like, Oh, people are going to buy the book and worrying about that. You don't have any control over that. All you can do is control over putting the best foot forward when preparing the book. And then the rest is just out of your hands. And if you can accept that, then that's, um, easier on the mind. And I think When people are stressed, if they are anxious, they're usually like anxious about something in the future, if they're depressed or depressed about something that happened in the past, and like in those timescales, like you can't control or things that have happened in the past, you can't really control a lot of what happens in the future, you can control what happens right now. And so it's just like, making those prioritizing those things and saying, okay, how much time am I spending? How much energy am I committing to things that are outside of my control. How much energy am I wasting? How much do I have within my control? Let's focus on that. And focusing on, like you say, that whole wellness side of things definitely has a big role to play on how your body heals, but also how your mind heals as well. So plenty to unpack there. And as we wrap this up, is there any other final takeaways if there's someone listening to this, they're struggling to recover with PHT and... Is there any message you have for them? Anything that we may not have discussed or something you maybe want to rehash on? Yeah, I really want to touch on the mental and emotional side of the injury because nobody wants to think when they're in this kind of pain, when they're feeling the real physical pain. I believe you. Well, I believe that pain is real. I know it is because I've felt it too. And I also truly believe addressing the mental and emotional side of things has a drastic impact on that physical pain. really, really does. And so I want you to be kind to yourself. I encourage everybody listening to just give yourselves big, big spoonfuls of self-compassion. I often say that I evicted my inner critic that had a voice like Gilbert Godfrey and replaced him with an inner narrator with the voice of Elizabeth Gilbert. It's just warm, hot chamomile tea that's so soothing. And that is me. It's I'm talking to you and that person is inside of me too. And to feel like my mind and body are connected and not at odds with each other is just the most magical, wonderful place to live. And it's safe now. And that is kind of something I tell myself a lot. And it's a post-it that I keep on mirrors that just says, you're safe now. And it's wonderful to read that. I encourage anybody that's kind of feeling like their nervous system is overloaded. to just write those words, write those words, put it on your phone, put it on your mirror, you're safe now. And I think that's magical. I think it'll really help to, to where you you'll believe it. You are safe now and you can heal. Brook, you're on a great mission here. Extremely active on socials. For someone who wants to follow you more, what links should I leave in the show notes for people? Thank you. I love Instagram. I think Elizabeth Gilbert said that Facebook used to be this rager party and now the music stopped and nobody's having any fun, but we're still hanging around, guilty. But Instagram is my jam. I love, love Instagram. It's at Brooke Bitten on Instagram and I'm on Strava. So if you want to gallivant around with me, I jump off cliffs and then go swimming in open water and I back to running and trail running. I love, love Strava, it's Brooke Benton-Himena is on there. And those are kind of my two biggies is just Strava and Instagram. Excellent. I also wanted to quickly say with all of my books, I know what I know, but there's plenty of room at the top and I don't know everything. And that's why I always collaborate with other professionals. One of your podcast guests, Emily Larson. was a contributor to 10 minutes to slim and sober for TMS. And I also collaborated with two dieticians that have PhDs in biochemical and molecular nutrition. A woman who has a PhD that contributed some wellness content, her name's Dr. Ayla Dolan. And I always want to be sure that you're getting information from all the sources, not just what I know from the story that I told you, like, I don't even know that I wanna go. through your advice, but I got plenty of other experts I leaned on as well, um, to make sure that we're giving the best of the best content for fitness, wellness, nutrition, and a holistically well lifestyle. No one knows it all. Um, but you pick up little bits and pieces along the way, like, you know, pain science was never taught at university for my profession, and it just took a curiosity and talking to a lot of people, seeing a lot of clients, you know, interviewing a lot of pain scientists and delving into the research myself that. You know, um, it, it rubs off on you and you pick up on all these little tools and tips and those, those things. So thanks very much for coming on being so vulnerable and sharing your story because it's a, it's an emotional rollercoaster to go through that again and relive it and have to retell it. But it's helping a lot of people as you share that. So thanks for coming on and sharing. Thank you. Thank you, Brody. Helping your audience helps me as well. I think my PhD is going to ease up a little bit just after sharing the story. Well, best of luck. Well, best of luck with the future. And once again, congratulations on that half marathon race. I think that was a huge achievement for you. Um, and it's rubbed off on a lot of people. It's got like that post on Instagram got to me as well. All of the Instagram posts, it seems like it's quite emotionally driven and, um, getting a lot of people. So once again, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Brody. My pleasure. If you are looking for more PhD resources, then check out my website link in the show notes. There you will find my free PHT 5-day course, other online content and ways you can personally connect with me, including a free 20-minute injury chat to discuss your current rehab and any tweaks you might need to make. Well done for taking an active role in your rehab by listening to content like this, and together we can start ticking off all of your rehab goals and finally overcome your PHT.