Do you have joints that are constantly painful or repeatedly injured? Do those joints cause you pain and prevent you from doing the activities that you enjoy? What would you be willing to do to get back to an active lifestyle? Many injuries and chronic pain are caused by ligament and tendon damage that simply do not fully heal. Prolotherapy (proliferation therapy) or Regenerative Injection Therapy is a treatment that triggers, or restarts, the incomplete healing of an injured joint.
Prolotherapy engages your body’s healing mechanisms by the following these steps.
- You receive an injection in injured connective tissue. Connective tissue is very dense (meaning it has very little blood flow) so when blood cells are scanning for injuries to repair, these ones often gets passed over. But your nervous system still “feels” the problem, giving you ongoing pain. Most often, the injected solution is simply local anesthetic and dextose.
- The injection restarts the healing process by creating a localized low grade inflammation (the first step in healing), opening up the connective tissue and drawing blood cells to the site. The blood cells release growth factors which activate fibroblasts.
- Fibroblasts repair the injury by generating new fibers in the connective tissue. These fibers are thicker and shorter than the those present before the original injury. The new tissue is stronger and holds the joint together better than ever before.
If you have a muscle or joint injury or pain that lasts longer than six to eight weeks that injury is going to benefit from a treatment. Repeat injuries and ones that you wish to promote faster or more thorough healing within can also be treated. Problem joints can be treated years after the initial injury, time is not a factor in promoting repair. If the connective tissue is damaged, then prolotherapy will produce results. Often older injuries require more treatments to produce full healing, but reduction in pain and improvements in mobility are easily gained with this targeted therapy.
Prolotherapy is different than cortisone injections. Cortisone injections decrease pain in the short term, but do nothing to promote healing. In fact, cortisone essentially blocks healing, resulting in greater problems over the long term. Prolotherapy can cause an increase in pain in the first few days as your healing processes are activated but quickly the overall pain is decreased from its pretreatment levels.
Prolotherapy is not a newly developed treatment. It has been used increasingly for over 75 years. There are numerous sources research and scholarly articles that have been produced supporting its use and success. If you are interested in reviewing some clinical research then follow this link.
If you are wondering what injuries prolotherapy can be used to treat, here is a general list.
- Neck/back pain
- Joint pain – Shoulder, Hip, Knee, Elbow, etc
- Headaches or whiplash
- Spinal degeneration
- Sports injuries
- Sciatica
- Tendonitis
- Rib Pain
- Arthritis
- TMJ pain
- Repeated Sprains, most often Ankle
- Carpal tunnel
- Dislocations/Loose joints
- Over Stretching injuries
After thousands of successful treatments I continue to be amazed by the number of people who are unnecessarily suffering. Please help yourself, contact the clinic for and start feeling positive and comfortable in your body..