Prolotherapy Information

Questions and Answers
Prolotherapy is a little known but highly effective method of treating chronic ligament and tendon weakness. In Prolotherapy, the weakened areas are injected with a proliferant solution that directly stimulates the growth of healthy, strong tissues. The healing process can be expected to take about six weeks after the initial treatment. As the tendons and ligaments grow stronger and more capable of doing their tasks, the pain is alleviated.

10 Tips to Determine if You Are A Good Prolotherapy Candidate
Pain simply put is just the body’s response telling you that you have some tissue that is breaking down. The same thing happens to an athlete who is in the heat of competition. When the muscles start hurting, it is just a sign that you are working really hard. It also reveals that tissue is breaking down, which is especially important to those who are athletes. The goal of Prolotherapy is to build the tissue back up.

Do Prolotherapy Injections Hurt That Much?
Some people have many Prolotherapy injections and do not flinch, while others receive a few shots and have a rough time. 

Prolotherapy: How Many Treatments
Prolotherapy is performed every six weeks because most ligaments heal over a six-week period. 
As healing progresses, the quantity of injections required per treatment usually decreases. The pain generally continues to diminish with each treatment unless it is an acute injury which may heal in only two to three weeks after Prolotherapy.

Prolotherapy and Chronic Pain
The current vogue among traditional pain therapists is to recommend a combination of aspirin or ibuprofen, bed rest, and small amounts of muscle relaxants over a short time. To that, some clinicians add massage, manipulative or physical therapy. These treatments provide some relief, but do not cure the underlying problem.

When Prolotherapy Doesn't Work
Someone who receives Prolotherapy does so with the hope of achieving complete pain relief.  Most people are very happy that they received Prolotherapy.  There are several options available to the person who has a less than optimal results with Prolotherapy.  

Your Tests Says Abnormality But Is That The Cause of Pain?
Medical technology has taken over the role of the medical touch. It used to be that doctors would touch patients to make a diagnosis, especially in regards to pain. Today it's very common for people in pain to get an extensive array of tests to show some abnormality. The problem is that often the abnormality is NOT causing the problem.

The Top Ten Conditions Treated by Prolotherapy
Prolotherapy helps relieve the chronic pain of many conditions but here are the top ten.

What is Prolotherapy?
Prolotherapy is a simple, natural technique that stimulates the body to repair the painful area when the natural healing process needs a little assistance. Notice I said "a little assistance". Because often, that's all the body needs, the rest it can take care of on it's own. In most cases, commonly prescribed anti-inflammatory medications and more drastic measures like surgery and joint replacement may not help, and often hinder or even prevent the healing process.

Are You A Candidate For Prolotherapy?
Prolotherapy stimulates the body to repair the painful area. For the patient who has localized areas of pain or the person who has had a recent injury from an accident, Prolotherapy is a very effective treatment to strengthen those specific areas and eliminate the pain. Realize, however, that Prolotherapy starts the growth of new healthy, strong tissue. Your body--your own immune system--grows the tissue. For the person who has terrible digestion, chronic fatigue, irritable bladder; and a host of other chronic nutritional, hormonal, allergic problems, these deficiencies and illnesses should be corrected so the body will be able to respond to Prolotherapy.

What is in a Prolotherapy Injection?
The basic mechanism of Prolotherapy is simple. A substance is injected, which leads to local inflammation. The localized inflammation triggers a wound-healing cascade, resulting in the deposition of new collagen. 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 sports injuries and chronic pain, but depends upon the technique of the individual Prolotherapist. The most important aspect is injecting enough of the solution into the injured and weakened area. If this is done, the likelihood of success is excellent.

Prolotherapy and Surgery
Except in a life threatening situation or impending neurologic injury, surgery, with it's many possible complications, should always be a last resort and done only after all conservative treatments have been exhausted.

Prolotherapy FAQs
Prolotherapy stimulates the body to repair the painful area. For the patient who has localized areas of pain or the person who has had a recent injury from an accident, Prolotherapy is a very effective treatment to strengthen those specific areas and eliminate the pain.

WHY ISN'T PROLOTHERAPY MORE WELL-KNOWN?

There are approximately 300 doctors in the country that have full-time Prolotherapy practices.  The rest of the clinicians that do Prolotherapy “dabble” in it.  In other words, in many areas of the country there just isn't an experienced Prolotherapist in that area.  In those parts of the country, Prolotherapy isn't going to be as well known as the areas where there are very experienced Prolotherapists.

Why has your doctor never heard of Prolotherapy!
"Operations are what I do," Believe it or not, one of my recent new Prolotherapy patients was given the above quoted statement as an explanation for why the surgeon he was consulting did not offer any alternative treatments for his back pain. Unfortunately, as the present case illustrates, many physicians just “do what they do” and never research any of the alternatives that are available to the patients.

How can Prolotherapy be made "Painless"?
When I started working with Gustav Hemwall, M.D., most of his clients received intravenous Demerol. Demerol is a narcotic, like morphine. It is a great pain reliever. So for the last 14 years I have been using various intravenous medications to help people get Prolotherapy over large areas relatively pain free....Prolotherapy can also be made ‘painless’ by premedicating with substances like xanax and vicodin. Some patients use ultram or Tylenol before the treatments. The majority however just get the Prolotherapy done, unless they are going to get a lot of areas done. If this is case, then some type of pain medication is typically taken. For those that are tough, they take medication by mouth, for the rest of us mortals (me included) give me a shot of Demerol!