YES,
THE WHOLE BODY CAN BE TREATED WITH
PROLOTHERAPY!
Ross Hauser, M.D.
Amanda has
Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). This is a syndrome that can affect every
joint and
ligament in the body. People with EDS like Amanda’s are
typically in a wheelchair by the early 20's! Amanda had been a
person in a wheelchair in the past, but she certainly was not when I
first saw her. She had been receiving yearly
Prolotherapy
from Dr.
Gustav Hemwall, and then started to see me when Dr. Hemwall retired. She received Prolotherapy to just about all of the joints of her body
over a two day period. It really helped her. She was able to work
part-time and have a much more enjoyable life that others with her
condition.
The more common case
that we see for whole body Prolotherapy is in a patient with
benign
congenital hypermobility or BCH. BCH occurs in about 5% of the
population, typically in women. The condition is characterized by loose
joints due to loose
collagen. The joints are loose with BCH, but not
nearly as loose as they are in EDS. A typical scenario for a BCH
patient is complaints of pain in multiple joints with those joints
unstable on physical exam. The person has often tried extensive
chiropractic treatments, but the pain relief lasts shorter and shorter
periods of time. We have heard patients say that by the time they
checked out of the
chiropractor's office and got in the car, the joints
had moved again! Prolotherapy is done to the areas of pain and, in some
folks, it can be a lot of areas!
Renea has BCH. Though
she has not yet received Prolotherapy to her whole body at one time,
over the course of time she has had most of the joints of her body
treated with Prolotherapy. She now has no lower back pain,
neck pain,
shoulder pain,
elbow pain, or
knee pain and we are currently working on
her elbows.
What about the pain of the injections? What about
Fibromyalgia?
What about the
pain of the
Prolotherapy injections? Can something be done to deaden the pain? Absolutely. For extensive Prolotherapy cases like this, we use
intravenous pain control also called conscious sedation. The patient is
not completely “knocked out,” but made “woozy” with intravenous
Demerol,
morphine, or Versed (valium like).
This typically puts a person in a
twilight state, making the shots very tolerable.
In regard to
Fibromyalgia, sometimes the patient may require whole body
Prolotherapy. As you may or may not know, Fibromyalgia is a syndrome
that means “pain all over the body,” That’s all it is. More often than
not, however, the Fibromyalgia patient at
Caring
Medical receives
Prolotherapy to the worst areas and then receives comprehensive natural
medicine treatments to put the body in the healing mode. The
combination of balancing body chemistry and the Prolotherapy helps a
person with Fibromyalgia overcome the condition. Perhaps a better way
to put it is the condition goes into remission. With the remission of
the Fibromyalgia comes an accompanied remission of the pain. In
summary, Caring Medical sees the difficult cases. We help the people who
are supposed to be in wheelchairs or destined to a life-time of pain, or
even worse-yet, destined to long-term drug addiction to
pain killers. We
work to keep everyone active for life – even the “difficult cases!”