Dr Ethan Kellum - Regenerative Solutions

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Dr Ethan Kellum - Regenerative Solutions

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Orthopedic Surgeon + Regenerative Specialist
Team Physician for Tennessee Titans & USA basketball

10/30/2026

Which one have you done this year? Tell me below.

Where do most injuries actually happen? At home, doing something completely ordinary.

People are careful at the gym and on the field because it feels risky. At home, nobody warms up to carry laundry downstairs or pull a heavy pan out of the oven.

The holidays make it worse. More decorating, more lifting, more rushing, more stuff on the floor.

A few habits that prevent a lot of what I see:

Clear the stairs and walkways. Shoes, bags and toys on the steps are a classic fall setup.

Turn on a light. A lot of falls happen at night on the way to the bathroom.

Wear shoes or socks with grip on hard floors.

Lift close to your body, and turn with your feet instead of twisting your back.

Use the right tool for the job, and slow down when you're in a hurry.

If you do get hurt, pain that keeps you from putting weight on it, a joint that looks wrong, or numbness are all reasons to get it checked that day.

I go through the three that send the most people to my office in the video. The third one is probably on your counter right now.

10/29/2026

Tell me what you had for breakfast and I'll score it.

How much protein should you eat at breakfast? Probably more than you're eating now.

Most people eat very little protein in the morning and most of it at dinner. Spreading it across the day is better for holding on to muscle, especially as you get older, and a protein heavy breakfast keeps you fuller through the morning.

A good target for most adults is somewhere around 25 to 30 grams. A few easy ways to get there:

Three eggs with a cup of Greek yogurt.

Cottage cheese with fruit.

A protein shake next to whatever you already eat.

Last night's leftovers. Nobody said breakfast has to look like breakfast.

Watch the labels. Flavored yogurts and cereal bars can carry a lot of added sugar, and "high protein" on the front of a box doesn't always mean much once you turn it over.

You don't need a perfect breakfast. You need one with protein in it most days.

I rated the most popular breakfasts out of 10 in the video. One that people swear is healthy scores a lot lower than they think.

10/28/2026

Would you trust a surgeon who gets paid to operate? Tell me below.

How do you know if you actually need surgery? Ask more questions than you think you're allowed to.

Most surgeons are excellent and want what's best for you. But the system usually pays for procedures, not for conversations, so it's worth making sure you understand every option before you decide.

A few questions worth asking at any surgical consult:

What happens if I wait three months and do focused rehab first?

What does recovery realistically look like, week by week?

What are the chances this doesn't fix my pain?

What would you do if this were your own knee, shoulder or back?

Are there non surgical options you'd want me to try first?

A good surgeon answers all of these without getting defensive. And getting a second opinion is normal. Nobody worth seeing will be offended.

Sometimes surgery really is the best answer, and waiting too long has its own cost. The goal is to choose it with the full picture, not because it was the first thing offered.

I break down what everyone in healthcare actually makes in the video, including the part most surgeons don't say out loud.

10/27/2026

Which one is in your cabinet right now? Tell me below.

Does joint pain relief from the drugstore actually work? Some of it does. A lot of it is just good packaging.

A few things worth knowing before you buy anything:

Read the active ingredient, not the front of the box. Two products with completely different branding can have the same thing inside.

Not all creams work the same way. Some put an anti-inflammatory into the tissue under the skin. Others mostly create a hot or cold feeling on the skin itself.

Topicals tend to work best on joints close to the surface, like knees, hands and elbows, and less well on deep joints like the hip.

Pills and creams can stack. If you already take an anti-inflammatory by mouth, check with your doctor or pharmacist before adding a cream with a similar drug in it.

And if you're reaching for something every single day, that deserves a visit. Daily pain usually means the underlying problem needs attention, not a better product.

I ranked the most popular pain relief products in the video, and some of the best sellers don't make it out of D tier.

10/26/2026

Which one surprised you? Tell me below.

How long does it actually take to change your body? Longer than social media makes it look, and the slow part isn't your muscles.

Muscle responds to training fairly quickly. Most people feel stronger within a few weeks and see changes within a few months. Tendons, ligaments and bone adapt much more slowly.

That gap is where a lot of people get hurt. They feel strong, add weight or miles too fast, and the tissue that holds everything together hasn't caught up.

A few ways to respect the timeline:

Progress in small steps, and hold each step for a couple of weeks before adding more.

Treat a nagging ache as a reason to slow down, not something to push through.

Alternate hard days and easy days so your tissue has time to adapt.

Think in years, not weeks. The most impressive bodies you see usually belong to people who have trained consistently for a very long time.

And genetics matter. Some things, like height and a lot of top end speed, can't be trained.

I broke down how long it takes to build seven different athlete bodies in the video, and one of them is basically off the table as an adult.

10/25/2026

Which of these three sounds like you? Tell me below.

Have you been treating the wrong spot? It happens more than you'd think, and it's one of the main reasons pain hangs around for months.

Pain is a signal your brain interprets, and it isn't always precise about where that signal started. Nerves that serve one area can carry pain into another. That's called referred pain.

A few clues that the spot that hurts might not be the source:

The pain is vague and hard to point to with one finger.

Pressing on the sore spot doesn't make it worse.

Treatment aimed at that spot helps for a day, then it comes right back.

It changes when you move a different part of your body, like your neck, your back or your hip.

That's why a good exam checks the joints above and below where it hurts, not just the spot you point to.

If you've been resting, icing and rehabbing the same area for months without real progress, it may be time to look somewhere else.

I walk through three of the most common ones I see in the video. The third one is something a lot of athletes are dealing with right now.

10/24/2026

If you want the strength routine I'd start you on, comment HELP.

What does an NFL team doctor actually do on game day? A lot more than people think, and most of it happens before kickoff.

The medical staff is at the stadium hours early. Injury reports get reviewed, braces and taping get checked, and there's a plan for every kind of emergency before a single snap.

During the game, the job is fast decisions. When a player goes down, there are only minutes to figure out whether he can go back in or whether he's done for the day. That call can protect his season, and sometimes his career.

The part that carries over to you is what happens after. Pro athletes don't come back because of secret treatments. They come back because the problem gets diagnosed early, the rehab is structured, and nobody rushes it.

That's the same approach I take with every patient, whether they play on Sundays or just want to get back on the golf course.

The money side of being a team doctor is not what most people assume. I explain it in the video.

10/23/2026

Which one did I get wrong? Tell me below.

How do you know if a fitness trend is worth your time? Ask one question before you start: could I still be doing this in five years?

Most trends are built to go viral, not to last. They promise fast results, they're extreme on purpose, and they usually leave out recovery. That's why the injury tends to show up a few weeks in, right when the excitement wears off and the fatigue piles up.

A few things that separate a good program from a trend:

It gets harder gradually. Progress should come from adding a little over time, not from punishing yourself on day one.

It has rest built in. Your body adapts between sessions, not during them.

It includes some form of strength training.

It doesn't hurt your joints. Muscle soreness is normal. Sharp pain or joint pain isn't the price of results.

And the boring stuff counts. Sleep, protein and walking never trend, but they carry most of the results.

I ranked the biggest fitness trends from S tier to D tier in the video, and a few of the most popular ones land right at the bottom.

10/22/2026

What's your sport? Tell me below and I'll tell you what it's doing to your joints.

Is your sport bad for your joints? Usually it isn't the sport. It's how fast you ramped up.

Most of the injuries I see in weekend athletes come from doing too much, too soon. Muscle gets stronger in weeks. Tendons, ligaments and cartilage take months. So you feel ready long before your joints actually are.

A few rules that protect you whatever you play:

Build up gradually. Big jumps in how much you play in a single week are where overuse injuries tend to show up.

Warm up like you mean it. Five to ten minutes of movement that looks like your sport beats static stretching on a cold body.

Strength train twice a week. Strong muscles around a joint take load off the joint itself.

Respect pain that changes how you move. If you're limping, favoring one side, or it's worse every session, that isn't soreness anymore.

I'm one of the team physicians for the Titans and USA Basketball, and I rated the most popular sports for your joints in the video. A couple of the scores surprise people.

10/21/2026

If this sounds like your knee, comment HELP and I'll send you the knee section from my guide, plus the full training week.

Knee hurts going down stairs but not going up? That one detail narrows things more than most scans will.

Going up, your thigh muscle shortens to lift you. Going down, it lengthens to lower you under control, which is a much harder job, and it presses your kneecap back into the groove it sits in. So pain on the way down and not on the way up points at the joint behind the kneecap rather than the main weight-bearing surface.

Two things you can check yourself.

Sit with the knee bent for a long stretch, in a car or at the cinema, and see whether it aches and wants straightening. That's classic for the kneecap joint.

Then try a slow step-down off the bottom stair. If the pain arrives as you lower, and is worse the slower you go, same answer.

Now the ones that mean stop self-diagnosing. A knee that swells repeatedly, locks, catches, or gives way underneath you. Those aren't kneecap patterns and they want looking at properly.

For everything else the fix is unglamorous and it works. Slow step-downs and sideways band walks for the hip, three times a week. Not rest, and not avoiding stairs, which is how you end up weaker and sorer than you started.

Address

125 Cool Springs Boulevard, Suite 240
Franklin, TN
37067

Website

https://drethankellum.com/

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