Your musculoskeletal system is the tissue that connects your bones and joints to your muscles with tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and bursae. This system is connected to all of your 206 bones, and injuries and conditions that affect the soft tissue of that system can lead to pain that can hinder mobility and dexterity in the bones and joints affected. Over 1.7 billion people worldwide deal with musculoskeletal conditions, which are a leading cause of disability.
Physical therapy is a common treatment for soft tissue injuries of the musculoskeletal system, but prolotherapy is an alternative that has been around for many years and can help the body repair itself. Those looking for prolotherapy for tendon and muscle pain are in good hands with Jake Schmutz, NMD and our skilled medical staff at Integrative Medica in Salt Lake City, Utah.
To find out more about how prolotherapy can help you, let’s first look at the types of pain that occur in your tendons and muscles. Then, we’ll examine how prolotherapy helps, and what you can expect while undergoing the treatment.
You can experience different types of acute (sudden severe pain) or chronic (long-lasting, repeated pain) soft tissue pain in several areas:
The pain, stiffness, burning sensations, muscle twitches, aching, and fatigue that can be associated with these problems is often the result of conditions like arthritis, overuse injuries, direct injuries, joint dislocations, and fractures. Soft tissue injuries often take longer to heal than bone fractures.
Also referred to as regenerative injection therapy or proliferation therapy, prolotherapy is a treatment designed to stimulate healing in the body by using dextrose or saline (i.e., sugar or salt solution) in injured areas. This makes it ideal for treating damaged tendons, ligaments, muscles, arthritis in joints, sprains, strains, and unstable joints, as it helps to reduce pain and stiffness, improve function and mobility in joints, and improves strength in soft tissue.
While the treatment has been around for a long time in some form, the science of the treatment is still not entirely understood. However, research shows effectiveness in treating musculoskeletal pain.
The outpatient treatment is a straightforward process that takes about a half hour, and starts with cleaning the area to be treated with alcohol. Lidocaine cream will also be used to numb the injection site, and once that’s finished, the area is injected with the saline or dextrose solution (we use dextrose).
Ice or heat will be applied to the injection site immediately after treatment for up to 15 minutes while you rest in the office. Once finished, you’ll be able to go home. Often, people resume normal activities by the next day, but some bruising, swelling, and stiffness may linger in the injection site for up to a week.
So if you’re looking for an alternative solution for relieving soft tissue and joint pain, make an appointment with Dr. Schmutz and Integrative Medica today to see what prolotherapy can do for you.
