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Prolotherapy Prolotherapy is a medical procedure that many chronic and acute pain patients, as well as athletes with sports injuries, are turning to because it is used as an alternative to surgery, arthroscopy, cortisone shots, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and/or chronic use of narcotic pain medications. Prolotherapy stimulates the body to repair the painful injured area(s) when the body’s natural healing process is not able to do the job on its own. In most cases, commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory medications and more drastic measures like surgery, joint replacements, cortisone shots, and other therapies may not help, and often hinder or even prevent the healing process. The basic mechanism of Prolotherapy is simple. What most people are surprised to find out is that the body heals by inflammation. In other words, we need inflammation to heal our bodies. It works because it actually stimulates an inflammatory reaction in the body. We inject Prolotherapy solutions into the affected ligaments, tendons, and/or joints, which leads to local inflammation in the injected area. The localized inflammation triggers a wound healing cascade, resulting in the deposition of new collagen, the material that ligaments and tendons are made of. New collagen shrinks as it matures. The shrinking collagen tightens the ligament that was injected and makes it stronger. Prolotherapy has the potential of being 100 percent effective at eliminating pain and sports injuries that are a result of ligament and/or tendon weakness. Prolotherapy involves the treatment of two specific kinds of tissue: tendons and ligaments. A tendon attaches a muscle to the bone and involves movement of the joint. A ligament connects two bones and is involved in the stability of the joint. A strain is defined as a stretched or injured tendon; a sprain, a stretched or injured ligament. Once these structures are injured, the immune system is stimulated to repair the injured area. Because ligaments and tendons generally have a poor blood supply, incomplete healing is common after injury. This incomplete healing results in these normally taut, strong bands of fibrous or connective tissue becoming relaxed and weak. The relaxed and inefficient ligament or tendon then becomes the source of chronic pain and weakness. The greatest stresses to the ligaments and tendons are where they attach to the bone, the fibro-osseous junction. The most sensitive structures that produce pain are the periosteum (covering of the bone) and the ligaments. It is important to note that in the scale of pain sensitivity (which part of the body hurts more when injured), the periosteum ranks first, followed by ligaments, tendons, fascia (the connective tissue that surrounds muscle), and finally muscle. Cartilage contains no sensory nerve endings. If you are told that your cartilage is the cause of your pain, you have been misinformed; the cartilage cannot hurt because they contain no pain sensing nerves. If there is cartilage damage, the ligaments are typically the structures that hurt. Ligaments are weakest where they attach to bone. The periosteum is the most sensitive area to pain and the ligaments second. It is now easy to understand why this area hurts so much. This is where the Prolotherapy injections occur, and thus eliminate the chronic pain of many conditions including arthritis, mechanical low back pain, degenerative disc disease, cartilage injury, and sports injuries. Call DermMania 815.455.8603 for you Consultation with an MD. |
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