BPC-157 + TB-500 stack: hsCRP down, tendon pain same — anyone have labs?

CRP 2.8 to 1.7 in six weeks is a big drop. Did you change training volume or diet? That’s usually my confounder.

I looked at NCT07752381 after your post. Completed registry trial, 40 enrolled, gummies on inflammation, physical performance, recovery, but raw data says no resluts reported. That’s the frustrating part. NCT02637284 is PCO-02 safety/PK, 42 enrolled, status unknown. NCT07803250 is rotator cuff repair, 30 patients, not yet recruiting. So we’re stacking on animal and expression data while the human stuff is mostly empty. I’m not saying don’t log it, but your n=1 is doing a lot of work. Did you run hsCRP before the stack at all, or just after you started?

Gummies trial with no results is still no results.

The Bacillus licheniformis expression paper is neat but irrelevant to stacking. 2% inoculum, 40 g/L soybean peptone, 80 g/L glucose, ~3x reporter vs basal. That’s production, not human response.

Ammonium sulfate 50% and 60% cuts are also purification details. Doesn’t tell us anything about BPC/TB synergy.

If you’re stacking, TB-500 could be the thing moving CRP. BPC alone in rat ulcer model showed 75.3% inhibition, but that’s not a human inflammatory marker.

The rotator cuff trial not recruiting yet is the one I’d watch. 30 patients, surgery recovery, objective measures. That could answer more than our CRP n=1s.

Six weeks in, my hsCRP also dropped (3.1 to 1.8) while my morning Achilles pain sat at a flat 4/10, but mine tracked almost perfectly with an 11 lb weight loss and a 10-day deload, not the stack. The surprise was that the thing that finally budged my first-step pain was stopping my daily calf stretching and just logging pain before I got out of bed versus after 10 steps—my before-standing number was always worse and made me think I was stalled for weeks. Are you rating it bfore you stand or after you’ve walked a bit? My log looked like garbage until I separated those.

My weirdest tendon tracker has been my wedding ring — it gets tight a half-size before my ankle even feels puffy, and the unexpected part was that my worst pain days lined up with Friday takeout and two beers, not with training load or anything else I was doing. I started taping my ankle and calf every morning, and on post-takeout days my ankle was about 0.75 cm bigger and pain ran 1-2 points higher; once I kept sodium under roughly 2500 mg and moved my last meal to 7:30, my 5/10 mornings slid to 2/10 over about 12 days, and my waist dropped 1.5 inches while my weight was basically flat. Not saying the stack did nothing, but my swelling and scale moved on totally different calendars from the tendon. Have you tracked ring fit or ankle circumference alongside your pain? That was the only thing that predicted my flares.

Not labs, but the split that finally made my tracker useful: I log first-step pain separately from "20 minutes after walking around" pain. My hsCRP dropped around week 4 while first-step stayed at 4/10 — but the time it took to ease went from ~40 min to ~10. The number looked frozen while the underlying thing was visibly moving. Sharp follow-up: does your 4/10 hold flat all morning, or does it ease with the first few hundred steps? If it's clearing faster at the same peak, your daily average is hiding the trend. Also, are you scoring it at a fixed time each morning or whenever you first notice it?

Not labs either—just a dog groomer in a third-floor walkup, notes app full of random logs. That CRP drop with unchanged tendon pain is exactly why I’d split the pain score: first 3 steps out of bed vs. after you’ve walked a block. My Achilles was 5/10 at step one, then 2/10 by the time coffee hit, which told me I was tracking stiffness, not load response. When you say “after loading,” are stairs included? The three flights down at my place always felt worse than flat pavement. And your sleep-score jump—is it from longer time in bed or fewer wakeups? That could explain the CRP move more than the stack.

I’ve had the same “labs move, tendon doesn’t” thing. What finally gave me useful data was logging time to warm up instead of just the pain score: first-step pain stayed 4/10, but time to walk without a limp went from ~12 min to ~6 over three weeks. I also tracked barometric pressure and sleep position, not to prove anything, just for patterns. Quick question: did your sleep score improve before or after you cut training volume? If sleep came first, I’d wonder if the CRP drop is more recovery/de-load than the stack. And have you tracked nighttime calf cramps or morning first-step latency? Those shifted for me before the pain number did.

Systems question: are you rating pain at the same point relative to loading? I was logging 4/10 at wake-up, then realized after the first 10 steps it dropped to 2. Now I track two numbers — first-step pain and pain after 10 single-leg heel raises — plus time-to-warmup. CRP falling while both tendon numbers stay flat usually means the inflammatory signal isn’t the bottleneck. Sleep gain could just be less nighttime pain, not the stack. What does your daily log show for pain vs. stiffness vs. function?

Airport tip: I started logging first-step Achilles pain before/after flights and which hotel floor I’m on. My 4/10 mornings line up with red-eyes, hotel AC blasting, and whatever mattress topper situation. Not saying it’s the stack, but my CRP dip happened during a travel lull, so I’m suspicious it’s just less daily chaos. Have you split your log into travel vs home weeks? Also, is your sleep bump from fewer 5am alarms or actually sleeping through the night — those feel like different wins.

I stopped chasing the daily pain number and started tracking morning stiffness duration and pain-free single-leg heel raises, averaged weekly. My pain score sat at a stubborn 4/10 for weeks, but my time-to-warm-up quietly dropped from about 25 minutes to 8, which felt like real progress before the score moved. Have you logged time-to-warm-up or pain-free loading capacity alongside the pain rating? Sometimes that shifts earlier than the morning number.

Road warrior here. My hsCRP seems to track hotel-food and booze exposure more than anything I’m taking. Two weeks of airport lounge eggs + grocery-store rotisserie chicken dropped it; a conference week of catered pastries brought it right back. For the Achilles, the only thing my log caught was “airport steps” — those long terminal walks were way higher on days my morning pain was worse, even when my actual workouts were deloaded. Are you tagging travel days separately from training days? That split might tell you if it’s the stack or just the TSA 10k.

@loganbaker said: Are you tagging travel days separately from training days? That split might tell you if it’s the stack or just the TSA 10k.

Tagging is the whole game, only my setup is the opposite of yours. Most of my week I'm planted in one spot on sealed concrete in a grooming shop, and my only real sitting is the van between appointments. The thing that finally tracked my junk tendon was a tape measure around the ankle, morning vs. after the last dog of the day. A 0.5 cm jump showed up two days before the first-step pain got worse, while my CRP stayed boring the whole time. I also keep "pain with first steps" in its own column, separate from "pain after loading," because mine was worse after standing still at the table, not after stairs. Sharp q back: when you say it doesn't change after loading, do you mean same during the load too, or just no better/worse the next morning? That distinction changed my whole deload-vs-flare read.

Eleven years behind the chair, four days a week, concrete under the laminate — daily logging and the communal snack pile are old news to me. The number that actually moved was warm-up time, tracked separately from pain. My 0-10 sat at a 5 all month. The minutes from my first steps to walking normally went from

Different job, same two levers. Mail route, ~11 miles of pavement a day. hsCRP only drops with a genuine sleep stretch and no 11pm cereal. Achilles doesn't care about my labs — it tracks step count. Three days in the same dead shoes, same recovery stuff, and it's worse getting out of bed. You logging footwear, shift schedule, steps? And that 4/10 — before or after ten minutes upright? That timing is the only thing that's ever moved for me.

How are you timing the hsCRP draw — fasted, same time, no hard session for 48h? Mine moved ~0.6 just from a bad sleep week. Also, what’s your step count and single-leg heel-raise reps doing over those six weeks? If loading dropped, CRP can fall with zero tendon remodeling. I’d track first-step pain and 10-step stiffness separately; mine didn’t match CRP at all.

systemic vs local mismatch. Did you log time-to-warm-up, not just 4/10? My morning Achilles pain stayed 4/10 for ~7 weeks

Not labs, but my log showed hsCRP tracked almost 1:1 with daily step count and late meals, not with my Achilles. During a two-week deload I went from ~9k to ~4k steps, CRP fell 2.4 to 1.4, morning pain stayed 4/10. Once steps went back up, CRP crept up before pain did. So I’d separate “training deload” from “daily load deload.” Did your step count or standing time actually drop, or just gym volume? Also, is your 4/10 the first-step pain or the after-10-min walk pain? Those two moved independently for me, and averaging them hid the trend.

I had a similar mismatch: hsCRP tracked my alcohol and late dinners way more than my Achilles. What actually helped me read the tendon was logging pain at first step, after 10 min of walking, and then again 24h after a specific load. Mine was 5/10 on first step, 2/10 once warm, but 6/10 the next morning if I’d overdone calf raises. That delayed response was the useful signal. Are you tracking the 24h-after-load number, or just before/after?

six weeks is exactly when I start gaslighting myself with lab numbers. One thing I trck that hasn’t been mentioned: how long the first-step pain lasts, not just intensity. Mine stayed 4/10 but went from 20 minutes to 6, which felt like progress before the number moved. Does yours warm up at all, or is it still 4/10 after 10 minutes of walking? My CRP tanked when sleep and alcohol changed, but the tendon didn’t care until I changed when I loaded it. Not saying that’s your deal, just the only pattern I found.

I’d separate systemic inflammation from local tendon loading. For my Achilles, hsCRP and sleep moved with a deload, but the tendon only changed when I tracked capacity: single-leg heel raises to fatigue and how many minutes the first-step stiffness lasted. Morning 4/10 that doesn’t budge after loading can be a sensitivity thing, not necessarily tissue breakdown. Did your daily log include heel-raise reps or time-to-warm-up? That’s the metric I’d nerd out on more than ferritin. If those are flat too, I’d look at whether sleep score improved because you actually backed off lower-body volume.

Fellow cafe owner here — on my feet 10+ hrs and taste-testing all day, so I get the tracking rabbit hole. For my Achilles, morning pain tracked way more with yesterday’s footwear and floor time than any lab. Concrete in worn Danskos = 5/10 first steps; anti-fatigue mat + clogs with a slight heel = 2/10. Have you logged hours standing and shoe rotation? That was my missing variable when CRP looked pretty but the tendon didn’t. Also, sleep up 45 min is huge — are you waking less, or just sleeping longer?

did you log time-to-warm-up, not just the 4/10? I started tracking first-step pain and minutes until it felt normal, plus yesterday’s step count. My CRP fell during a deload, but my Achilles only budged when warm-up time went from ~10 min to ~4 min over a few weeks. What does your 4/10 do on a zero-step rest day vs. after a 6–8k step day? If it’s identical, I’d trust the warm-up trend over the lab number. That comparison was way more useful to me than ferritin or sleep score.