Pain Management: Prolotherapy
What is "prolotherapy"?
Prolotherapy is the natural stimulation of the body to produce more collagen or cartilage. The way we do that is through an injection series with a very simple solution of sugar water (dextrose; pharmaceutical grade) in a mixture with a local anaesthetic that is actually placed in the area where there is pain.
How is prolotherapy used to treat chronic pain?
Prolotherapy is used to treat chronic pain by injecting into an area of chronic pain, stimulating collagen growth, and then increasing the mass of the dense collagen and the strength of the collagen in order to help stabilize the area.
What are the benefits of prolotherapy as opposed to nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs?
The benefits of prolotherapy versus things like nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are that we are actually giving the body a chance to heal itself. All we're doing is following the natural healing process of the body, which is inflammation. If someone looks in a physiology book, they'll realize that inflammation is actually good to help heal the body. In western medicine, we think of inflammation as something that hurts the body. Chronic inflammation is not good for the body because it doesn't reach the higher level of inflammation which would be enough to bring the immune system in to actually create the healing process in growing more collagen.
Does prolotherapy work for everyone who experiences chronic pain?
Prolotherapy does not work for every person. No medical procedure works for every person. Prolotherapy works for about 80-90% of the people who use it. The people that don't get results from it are typically the people that are abusing their body by over exercising – they won't let the body have a chance to heal in the area where Prolotherapy has been administrated. They don't think of it as a real medical intervention, like having surgery, where they know they can't do anything for a long time – so, they'll just overuse the area. Some of my patients have backed off from doing three hours of exercise to doing one hour exercise of a joint that needs to rest for a while. The other class of people who don't heal typically are people taking anti-inflammatory medication and not knowing it. They'll take ibuprofen for a headache, they'll take aspirin for a headache – and they don't realize that that is blocking the inflammation that Prolotherapy actually gives to that part of the body to allow it to heal.
