The Disorganization of the Collagen Matrix

In the reactive phase, that's often that initial quite painful stage. And we might recap some of those stages as well just for people that so people can follow along if they haven't already listened to that to that podcast. So your disrepair stage, which follows your active stage, starts to see early matrix breakdown. If you continue to load the tendon and the cells continue to detect that the tendon is overloaded, it will produce proteins, particularly proteoglycans,. That will swell the tendon because they're hydrophilic, so they attract water into the tendon. The more of these proteoglycan and water that are in the tendon, the more you disrupt your collagen matrix.