PROLOTHERAPY RELIEVES PAIN FOR THE OBESE
Ross Hauser, M.D.

When a person is overweight it puts extra strain on the joints, obviously. What this means is that the ligaments in an overweight person have to be stronger than in a normal weight person to support the person.  From a Prolotherapy standpoint this means several things:

In other words, Prolotherapy works fine for the overweight person, they just need to be a little more patient. The largest person I have done Prolotherapy on?  I would say they weighed over 500 pounds.  If a 600 pound person came in or more I would have no hesitation in treating them as long as they understood the above.
 

The body has tremendous regenerative capabilities but one must never forget the fact that many different factors affect connective tissue healing. Perhaps, the most overlooked factor in healing is nutritional. Generally by the time someone is seen at Caring Medical in Oak Park, Illinois, they have seen ten health care clinicians and often none of them have considered any of the 10 causes as to why you don’t heal. The first factor that needs to be considered is nutritional.

By definition, pain means something is weak or injured, assuming a musculoskeletal cause for the pain. Most people can tell the date and time when their pain started. “I was in a car accident on….I fell down the stairs on….I was playing a lot of golf when…" Most people with pain know what started the pain they just want to find out how to end it! The first place to start is to look at what you are putting in your mouth to nourish your body.
 

In just about every nutritional study on Americans, nutritional deficiencies are found. To grow ligaments, tendons, or for that matter to heal any bodily structure, it is safe to say that the whole gamut of essential nutrients are needed. This means the spectrum of amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and trace elements that are supposed to be consumed in a healthy diet. Unfortunately the average person in America gouges on fried fatty foods in between the nutrient-deficiency binges of bread and pasta, which are helped down the old windpipe with sugar-ladened soft drinks.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea for the person in chronic pain to get some nutritional testing done to look for nutrient deficiencies. For the person with chronic pain, perhaps the main reason you don’t heal is because you don’t eat right! Too many carbohydrates is the number one reason people are overweight. The more weight you have the stronger your joints and ligaments have to be to support the weight. So weight loss is a part of curing chronic pain. What you don’t know is that one sugar load hampers immune function for four hours! So the person that has a soda every few hours is suppressing their immune system all day. This is the same immune system that heals your connective tissues. If you want to heal, cut out the sugar and take control of your diet.

What is the Effect of Obesity on Healing?
Ligaments, which provide stability to the joints, resistance stretching (good tensile strength). Tensile strength of ligaments is much less than the tensile strength of bone. Thus, when a joint is stressed, the ligament will be injured prior to the bone because it is the weak link of the bone-ligament complex the ligament will stretch and sprain before the bone will fracture. The area where the ligament is injured is the fibro-osseous junction.

The strength of the ligament required to maintain the stability of the joint depends directly on the pressure applied. The heavier the force applied to the joint, the stronger the ligament must be to hold the joint in place. This explains why overweight people, exhibiting a positive "basketball-belly sign,” are prone to chronic pain and impaired healing. The excess weight places increased pressure on the ligaments, especially in the lower back, hip, and knee areas. These ligaments stretch and weaken and begin the process known as osteoarthritis.

Weight loss is effective for decreasing the pain of osteoarthritis and chronic ligament and tendon weakness because it diminishes the stress on the joints. Stabilization and movement of the joint requires less work by the ligaments and tendons, resulting in reduced pain.