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PROLOTHERAPY AND
NEURAL THERAPY
Some people experience
chronic pain that is not due to
ligament or
tendon weakness. Some chronic pain stems from nerve irritation. This type of pain may be relieved by a treatment known as Neural Therapy.
Neural Therapy is a gentle healing technique developed in Germany that involves the injection of local anesthetics into autonomic ganglia, peripheral nerves, scars, glands, acupuncture points,
trigger points, and other tissues.
What are autonomic ganglia? The body contains two nervous systems: the somatic and the autonomic. The somatic nervous system is under a person’s voluntary control. The autonomic nervous system functions automatically. The autonomic ganglia is the place where the center of the autonomic nerves are located.
Somatic and Autonomic Nervous Systems
The nerves in the somatic nervous system control skin sensation and muscle movement. Picking up a cup of tea, for example, requires the somatic nervous system to sense the cup with the fingers and contract the muscles to lift the cup. These are the same nerves that are pinched in a herniated disc.
The autonomic nervous system is automatically activated. Life-sustaining functions like breathing, blood flow, pupil dilation, and perspiration are activated by the autonomic nervous system. People do not think about the blood vessels in their hands constricting when they are outside on a cold, winter day. This occurs automatically. The functioning of the autonomic nervous system is crucial, as it controls blood flow throughout the body. Illness often begins when the blood flow to an extremity or an organ is decreased.
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A limb with decreased blood flow feels cold and may experience dull burning pain. Even atrophy (breakdown) of the skin and muscles may occur. Decreased blood flow to an organ hinders its ability to function. Decreased blood flow to the
thyroid gland may result in hypothyroidism. In this instance, the amount of thyroid hormone the body produces is decreased, resulting in sluggishness, weight gain, and lower body temperature. Does that sound like anyone you know?
Disturbed autonomic nervous system function has been implicated in the following diseases:
headaches,
migraines, dizziness, confusion, optic neuritis, chronic ear infections,
tinnitus, vertigo, hay fever, sinusitis, tonsillitis, asthma, liver disease, gallbladder disease, menstrual pain, eczema, and a host of others. Neural therapy, because it increases blood flow, may have profoundly positive effects on such conditions.
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Neural therapy involves the injection of anesthetic solutions, such as
lidocaine or procaine, into these interference fields. The areas injected may include various areas of the teeth, tonsils, autonomic nervous system nerves, or ganglia, somatic or peripheral nerves, scars, or the area surrounding various organs. Immediate pain relief is often observed after the first injection because nerve irritation has been resolved.
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Most traditional physicians are not aware of the role of the autonomic nervous system or do not diagnose problems involving it because an autonomic nervous system cannot be tested. The autonomic nervous system does not appear on
x-rays; only somatic nervous system nerves can be seen.
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To diagnose an autonomic nervous system problem, the clinician must understand interference fields as well as neural therapy. An autonomic nervous system disorder should be suspected if any of the following conditions are evident: burning pain, excessively cool or hot extremities, pale or red hands or feet, skin sensitivity to touch, scars, root canals, chronic problems occurring after an infection or accident, chronic pain not responsive to other forms of therapy, shooting burning nerve pain, pinched nerve, or a chronic medical condition that has not responded to other treatments.
While neural therapy is used more frequently as a healing modality in European countries than in the United States, nevertheless,
Caring
Medical offers this treatment, if appropriate, as an option after an initial consultation.
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At our office, neural therapy has been a wonderful adjunctive therapy for the treatment of chronic pain and illness. A person with chronic pain often has evidence of both
ligament laxity and autonomic nervous system dysfunction. In such a case, both
Prolotherapy and Neural Therapy are warranted. Because chronic pain sometimes has an autonomic nervous system component, many are choosing neural therapy to get rid of their
pain.
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