What is Prolotherapy?

"When I was forty years old, I was diagnosed in two separate neurological clinics as having intractable [incurable] pain... It was by chance (later) I learned that Gustav A. Hemwall, M.D., a practitioner in the suburbs of Chicago, was an expert in prolotherapy. When I asked him if he could cure my pain, he asked me to describe it. When I had done the best I could, he replied, 'There is no such pain. Do you mean a pain...?' Then he continued to describe my pain much better than I could. When I said, 'That's it exactly,' he said, 'I can fix you.' To make a long story short, my intractable pain was not intractable and I was remarkably improved to the point where my pain ceased to be a problem," reports C. Everett Koop, MD, former US Surgeon General.

Do you suffer from the pain of arthritis, sports injury, and other joint problems? Did your doctors tell you, "There is nothing more we can do; you have to learn to manage your pain?" If they did, they may be wrong!

With some forms of chronic pain, such as cancer and neuropathic pain, to "manage" may be the best medicine can do until modern science brings new insights to its cure.

But, not so for the most common form of chronic pain-musculoskeletal pain. George Stuart Hackett, MD, demonstrated a cure for this type of pain over sixty years ago when he developed prolotherapy.

Dr. Hackett redefined the cause of chronic pain. He discovered that most musculoskeletal pain is due to ligament and/or tendon injury that over time leads to loose ligaments and unstable joints... causing pain.

Ligaments connect bones to bones. These mighty but small body tissues act somewhat like rubber bands, holding the bones together with just the right tension.

Tendons connect muscles to bones. Similar to ligaments, tendons enable movement of joints.

Ligaments and tendons naturally have a poor blood supply so they're prone to slow or incomplete healing after injury.

Hackett built on the work of others to develop a treatment--prolotherapy--to stimulate or restart the body's own healing of these tissues. Since that time, his methods have helped cure thousands of people with chronic pain. Yet, despite their report of pain relief, and research studies showing actual growth of related tendons, ligaments, and cartilage, prolotherapy is still not widely used within mainstream medicine.

"Traditional medical training overlooks the importance of ligaments, tendons and fascia and the small nerves that penetrate fascia and instead overemphasizes use of pharmaceuticals, surgery, or psychological labeling of patients," reports K. Dean Reeves MD, leading prolotherapy researcher and clinical associate professor, University of Kansas.

How Prolotherapy Works

Prolotherapy stimulates your own natural healing to restore the health of injured tissues that are causing pain. Another name for prolotherapy is regeneration injection therapy (RIT). Both refer to how this therapy works.

"Prolo" for proliferate, means "to grow," and "regeneration" means "to renew."

Prolotherapy grows or renews your body's tissues.

Prolotherapy involves the administration of a sterile solution with an anesthetic such as lidocaine into the area causing the pain. Prolotherapists use a number of different solutions ranging from simple sugar water to growth factors like platelet rich plasma (PRP) distilled from your own blood.

The solution stimulates a healing inflammatory reaction (the first stage of your healing process). This increases blood flow to the area bringing nutrients, healing immune cells, and growth factors that help the injured area repair. Your body's healing process takes over naturally.

Follow-up occurs anywhere from one to six weeks to assess results and need for more treatments. The whole process usually takes from two to six treatments depending on the nature of the injury. 

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