What Is Prolotherapy?
Prolotherapy involves injecting either a dextrose sugar solution or the patient’s own blood-derived tissue growth factors into the joints and at tendon and ligament insertions for the purpose of re-growing cartilage, strengthening weakened connective tissue and alleviating musculoskeletal pain and joint instability. Prolotherapy is also called “Proliferative Injection Therapy,” “Regenerative Injection Therapy,” or “Proliferation Therapy.”
Integrative Orthopedic & Sports Medicine: Non-Surgical Joint Rejuvenation
Dr. Jacobs uses a variety of modalities to treat pain and enhance his patients’ joint health. He has helped patients avoid numerous surgeries with prolotherapy joint rejuvenation. Dr. Jacobs has found that most clients who are given a ‘surgery is your only option’ prognosis, in fact, can regain healthier, pain-free function after his treatments. Prolotherapy stimulates the release of growth factors involved in the natural creation of new, healthy tissue, including: bone, circulation, cartilage, tendons and ligaments. The treatment is primarily used to re-build cartilage and strengthen weak or painful tendons and ligaments. Dr. Jacobs’ prolotherapy treatments help you achieve a healthier, stronger, more durable joint and can provide you a competitive edge; to get you back into your game and ready to dominate the competition.
You may be a candidate for prolotherapy if you:
- Have had pain for greater than 6 weeks
- Have to change position every 15 min or less
- Only get temporary relief from chiropractic adjustments, massage or acupuncture
- Have joints that “give way,” click, pop, snap, catch or grind
- Have arthritis or degenerative joint disease
- Have recurring headaches, jaw pain, face pain or ear pain
- Have nagging sports injuries
- Have had orthopedic surgery and still have pain
- Have pain that has no clear origin despite thorough examination by your doctors
How does prolotherapy work?
Essentially, prolotherapy permanently re-grows:
- ligaments – tough bands that connect bones to eachother
- tendons – muscle to bone connectors
- cartilage – the tough, flexible cushioning on the gliding surfaces within joints.
Ligaments are tough fibrous bands that limit bone movement within safe, pain-free boundaries. Worn, loose ligaments are tender when pressed, and they commonly cause referred pain to adjacent muscles. In addition, their laxity eventually effects surrounding structures, causing disc herniation, nerve compression, damage to tendons and cartilage, weakening of nearby muscles, and osteoarthritis. Breakdown of ligaments is a common source of neck and back pain, shoulder pain and pain in any other joint.
Tendon breakdown may be felt as local pain, referred pain, or as pain and dysfunction in the muscle that the tendon connects to bone.
Cartilage and fibrocartilage (meniscus, labrum) are damaged with injury or worn down in loose ligamented, dysfunctional joints. As cartilage gets thinner, movement irritates surrounding bone edges and eventually leads to bone spurs and other degenerative bone changes.
Dr. Thaddeus Jacobs intervenes with non-surgical, minimally invasive procedures that re-grow cartilage, ligaments and tendons to eliminate pain permanently. Dr. Jacobs precisely injects natural substances that attract your body’s own growth factors and circulating, adult stem cells. This is done in some series of monthly procedures, with each procedure re-growing more and more of the damaged tissue, filling in broken fibers, gradually returning integrity and safe, pain-free function to the joint or spinal region being reconstructed. It is an incremental, natural process that is, literally, gardening or farming of collagen, the substance that ligaments, tendons and cartilage are made of.
No medical procedure can solve all medical problems. Other pain management or herbal medicine treatments may be more appropriate for certain individuals and conditions. Your eligibility for prolotherapy can be preliminarily assessed in a scheduled phone consultation. Should it be determined you are a candidate, then a thorough initial evaluation in either our Salt Lake City / Holladay or Park City, Utah office will determine how Dr. Jacobs may be able to help you get on track to feeling and functioning better.