Military service is a challenging and demanding profession, and one of the major problems service members face is musculoskeletal injuries (MSKI). These injuries can affect tendons, ligaments, muscles, and fascia and cause significant issues over time. Our team at Momentous is excited to have been awarded a contract with the United States Air Force that focuses on mitigating this problem in the military. This contract will help us research and develop solutions to improve the joint health and quality of life of service members while reducing their risk of musculoskeletal injuries.
The Physical Demands of Readiness
With the rigors of training and physical demands of military life, service members are at a 2-5x higher risk for MSKI than civilians. These injuries to tendons, ligaments, muscles, and fascia are all linked by collagen, the most abundant protein in the human body, and its degradation through overuse and improper recovery.
Continued force on the tendons and ligaments of service members during training and on-the-job requirements can create micro-tears. When the collagen fibers fail to recover between sessions, the next time those ligaments and tendons are used, the remaining intact collagen tissue is forced to do all the work. This leads to faster breakdown and more injuries.
The High Cost of Injury
Musculoskeletal injuries sustained in basic training can follow service members throughout their careers, affecting their quality of life, physical fitness, and ability to move pain-free. All too often, these injuries can prematurely end military careers, hindering the Armed Forces and the lives of those brave women and men who volunteered to serve. MSKI, in and of itself, takes a heavy physical toll on American military personnel.
Additionally, military readiness suffers as well. On an annual basis, over 3.8 million duty days and over 10 million limited duty days are lost to musculoskeletal injury in the U.S. Army. These MSKI result in approximately 2.4 million medical visits to military treatment facilities, accounting for $548 million in direct patient care costs.
The ability to reduce time lost due to injury by even 5% would save the U.S. Army $40.5 million and approximately 500,000 limited duty days per year.
Innovation and Prevention
This intervention is about more than just saving money. Preventing injury is an absolute must when lives are on the line. We want to help increase combat readiness and resilience to injury for personnel and improve competitive overmatch for better warfighting function and higher productivity levels institution-wide.
A previous innovation contract with the military led to the launch of Momentous Collagen Shot, our ready-to-drink liquid collagen shot explicitly designed for the joint health of professional and tactical athletes. This first-of-its-kind, single-serve liquid gel shot is revolutionizing collagen supplementation.
Now we plan to supercharge this intervention to promote levels of collagen synthesis not currently available on the market and not previously seen in a nutritional intervention. Our work includes research by leading collagen researcher Dr. Keith Baar, the Head of the Functional Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of California Davis. His goal will be to isolate novel ingredients that further promote collagen synthesis and subsequent joint health and strength in the body. We want to enhance the current leading science-backed collagen formulation with additional ingredients to maximize collagen production in the body.
Performance Driven. Consumer Focused.
We believe in the benefits of our research and development efforts and we want to make them accessible to a wide range of consumers. That’s why all products developed through our collaboration with the military will eventually be made available to the public. Beyond our new product development efforts, we are committed to supporting our military community by offering special discounts on all our products to active and former service members through ID.me.
