Get up to speed from the start of this article. We have discussed the current state of pain management, the inflammation process, and the true causes of chronic pain. We have also talked about how prolotherapy can permanently remove ligament laxity, the most common cause of chronic pain. This results in amazing statistics on how effective prolotherapy can be. Now, we will talk a little about what actually goes on during a prolotherapy treatment, and where the technique originates.

The Origins of Prolotherapy

In 400 B.C. Hippocrates would treat pain in athletes by lancing their injured area with hot pins. Strangely enough, he reported success with this method. Today, our understanding of why this worked is that he re-injured an area, causing a new inflammation response, which healed the damage. This is shockingly similar to prolotherapy.

Here is more information about the modern history of prolotherapy.

A Prolotherapy Treatment

Recall, the goal of prolotherapy is to stimulate tissue repair by causing localized inflammation in tendons and ligaments. The way this is done is through injection of an “irritant solution.” An irritant solution is anything that will safely cause an inflammation response. What exactly goes in the solution that the patient is injected with may vary. A classical ingredient has been plain old dextrose! Solutions can be customized to be “weak” or “strong”, depending on how much inflammation to physician is seeking to create.

A prolotherapy treatment can involve dozens of injections. It can even involve well over 100 injections in one sitting. This depends on how extensive the ligament damage is in the patient.

After the treatment, a patient will typically be sore at the injection sites for a few days. Gradually, the patient will notice improvement in pain. A course of prolotherapy is typically between three and six sessions. Each session can be spaced around four to six weeks apart. After each session, the patient’s pain will improve, and more often than not, will result in complete recovery.

The best way to learn about a treatment is probably watching a video! Here is a prolotherapy treatment to the shoulder:

For more videos, go to this website and search for “prolotherapy.” You can see plenty of treatment videos there.

Joint Degeneration and Meniscus Injuries

It should also be mentioned, that prolotherapy actually stimulates the body to repair joint degeneration and meniscus injuries, in addition to tendon and ligament injuries. This makes prolotherapy an even more powerful treatment, with the ability to help pain sufferers avoid costly, and less effective surgeries.

Platelet Rich Plasma

Platelets are a natural component of human blood. Studies show a direct correlation between the concentration of platelets in an injury, and the amount of tissue proliferation involved in wound healing. A platelet rich plasma treatment (PRP) is done by taking a sample of the patient’s blood, and centrifuging out a certain portion of it. This portion of the blood is then injected into the site of injury. PRP is actually a specific kind of prolotherapy. It is most commonly used when a patient in not responding to traditional prolotherapy in the desired way. In short, even if regular prolotherapy doesn’t resolve a patient’s pain, add PRP treatment to the prolotherapist’s arsenal, and you have a solid one-two punch for chronic pain. Advances in prolotherapy, such as PRP, have the potential to make prolotherapy darn near 100 percent effective.

Not All Prolotherapists Are Equally Skilled

This is probably the number one reason why a person might not get satisfactory relief with prolotherapy. Lets take a look at the article I mentioned earlier from Mayo Clinic.

Aside from a few small things, the author says a prolotherapy session sometimes involves giving multiple injections. Whatever they were studying hardly deserves being called prolotherapy. A successful treatment will involve many injections. One injection is ludicrous.

This article is a perfect example of lack of education doctors have regarding prolotherapy. A skilled prolotherapist will know where to give injections, how many injections to give, how much solution to inject, and what specific type of solution to inject. To become an effective prolotherapist takes significant training.

Prolotherapy has the potential to be the best treatment for chronic pain known to date. The number of skilled physicians is however limited, as the treatment still remains relatively unpopular.

Next we will conclude this series on chronic pain by discussing the future of prolotherapy, and by leaving you with some resources to conduct your own research.

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