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What is the Root Cause of Your Pain?

If you or someone you know has some type of musculoskeletal pain, the most important question you can ask is- what is the root cause of the pain? Half of solving a problem is diagnosing where it comes from i.e. understanding it!. Does the pain come from bone, nerve or is it connective tissue? It may surprise you to know that the vast majority of this type of pain actually comes from the connective tissues i.e. ligaments and tendons. The insertions at the bone of these structures are highly innervated and give the body joint feedback known as proprioception. The flip side of all this nervous system information is if these structures are damaged they become very big pain generators. Unfortunately, these stretched insertions are not picked up on MRI or x-ray and are therefore often overlooked. What does show on x-ray and MRI are bone, meniscal and disc abnormalities, hence pain syndromes are often assumed to be caused by these things.

The problem is that these latter diagnoses often dictate surgical and invasive procedures to fix them and unfortunately there are attendant risks with these procedures. If the diagnosis is wrong these procedures are unlikely to help the pain and solve the problem.

Two examples:

Patient no. 1 , 60 year old gentleman, comes in with backpain that he has had for many years. His MRI shows a disc protrusion. Pain level is 5 to 7 aggravated by walking or sitting for long periods. I examine him and he has the “jump sign” when I push on his left pelvis. Further inquiry reveals that he fell out of a tree when he was 12 and took some time to recover.

His diagnosis his left pelvis sprain/strain. Recommended treatment is nonsurgical regenerative injections to the affected region. My opinion is the disc abnormality is incidental and is not the cause of his pain. Patient decides to give it a shot and requests Prolotherapy/Regenerative medicine. patient is somewhat improved after 3 sessions (at weekly intervals) so we spread out the treatments. after eight treatments patient has no more pain and returns to golf.

Patient no 2. is a 35 year old lady runner with knee pain. MRI shows meniscal tear. When I see the patient and examine her knee there is no clicking or locking but there is pain on palpation of the medial collateral ligaments. Diagnosis is sprained knee, specifically medial collateral ligaments. Recommend Prolotherapy for 6 to 10 visits. Patient improves with 5 treatments and goes back to running with no further problems. I do incidentally recommend good orthotics to reduce wear and tear on the knees.

Please visit this website for more information and upcoming free seminars.

If you or someone you know has some type of musculoskeletal pain, the most important question you can ask is- what is the root cause of the pain? Half of solving a problem is diagnosing where it comes from i.e. understanding it!. Does the pain come from bone, nerve or is it connective tissue? It may surprise you to know that the vast majority of this type of pain actually comes from the connective tissues i.e. ligaments and tendons. The insertions at the bone of these structures are highly innervated and give the body joint feedback known as proprioception. The flip side of all this nervous system information is if these structures are damaged they become very big pain generators. Unfortunately, these stretched insertions are not picked up on MRI or x-ray and are therefore often overlooked. What does show on x-ray and MRI are bone, meniscal and disc abnormalities, hence pain syndromes are often assumed to be caused by these things.
The problem is that these latter diagnoses often dictate surgical and invasive procedures to fix them and unfortunately there are attendant risks with these procedures. If the diagnosis is wrong these procedures are unlikely to help the pain and solve the problem.
Two examples:
patient no. 1 , 60 year old gentleman, comes in with backpain that he has had for many years. His MRI shows a disc protrusion. Pain level is 5 to 7 aggravated by walking or sitting for long periods. I examine him and he has the “jump sign” when I push on his left pelvis. Further inquiry reveals that he fell out of a tree when he was 12 and took some time to recover.
His diagnosis his left pelvis sprain/strain. Recommended treatment is nonsurgical regenerative injections to the affected region. My opinion is the disc abnormality is incidental and is not the cause of his pain. Patient decides to give it a shot and requests Prolotherapy/Regenerative medicine. patient is somewhat improved after 3 sessions (at weekly intervals) so we spread out the treatments. after eight treatments patient has no more pain and returns to golf.
Patient no 2. is a 35 year old lady runner with knee pain. MRI shows meniscal tear. When I see the patient and examine her knee there is no clicking or locking but there is pain on palpation of the medial collateral ligaments. Diagnosis is sprained knee, specifically medial collateral ligaments. REcommend Prolotherapy for 6 to 10 visits. Patient improves with 5 treatments and goes back to running with no further problems. I do incidentally recommend good orthotics to reduce wear and tear on the knees.
Please visit ProloMD.com for more information and upcoming free seminars.