But how does it work? How can injections stimulate healing?

Here, the most important thing is to realize that healing of connective tissues is totally dependent on blood flow. The body can only heal what it can get blood flow to. This is why the connective tissues are so problematic. Their blood supply is tenuous. If you look at ligaments and tendons in the body, they are white. This means that there is little blood flow, versus something like muscle that is red and hence has a lot of blood flow. You tear a muscle, it usually heals with not too much trouble. If you tear or sprain a tendon or ligament it very well might take weeks to heal if at all. These damaged structures may cause pain and debility for weeks, months and years, if not attended to. The general rule is if your body can heal it it will do so in a about4 weeks. If the pain persists more than this it may be permanent, unless you intervene with Prolotherapy or Regenerative medicine to stimulate the blood flow.

What do we inject?

I use two formulas. the first is a very concentrated sugar solution. Why sugar you ask? Because it’s safe. It works as an osmotic shock that dries the area out and actually causes localized inflammation, This will bring new blood flow and over the ensuing 6 or 8 weeks will cause a healing cascade where specialized cells such as macrophages clean up the debris and fibroblast move in to help the body regenerate the damaged tissues.

The second formula which is really a type of super Prolo is to use a patients own blood to isolate growth factors and use that as the proliferant. Many well known athletes have used this technique, with or without surgery, to heal sports injuries.

I usually start with regular Prolo and only progress to PRP (Platelet rich plasma) if the regular solution fails.)However in cases where people want optimal results as fast as possible, I might offer PRP as an option to start with.

Our overall success rate is about 85% but it may take 5 or 6 before you notice an appreciable difference and 6 to 10 before the problem is solved. I urge my patients to be patient (no pun intended). The good news is once it works it should be a permanent improvement.