How Prolotherapy Injections Are Revolutionizing Joint Pain Treatment

When we discuss modern medicine, we’re referring to interventional practices, such as medicines and surgery. While this approach can be beneficial, many medical experts are taking a step back to figure out a better way to approach our health — one that works with the human body, rather than fighting it.

At HealthFirst, Dr. Jonathan Singer is a big believer in deferring to the human body when it comes to healing. A great example of this is our use of prolotherapy to combat a growing problem — joint pain.

Here’s a look at how this simple, and not-so-new, practice is helping people to regain pain-free movement.

Creating a call to action

The concept behind prolotherapy is magnificent in its simplicity — we create a call to action and then step back and let your body do what it does best, which is take care of itself. 

More specifically, we inject an irritant, namely a dextrose solution, into your damaged tissues. This irritant does its job well and forces your immune system to respond, which it does with a healing cascade full of resources that repair and rebuild tissues.

In other words, prolotherapy is a technique that taps into the human body’s existing regenerative resources to repair tissues from the inside out, on a cellular level.

What's old is new again

In the title, we refer to prolotherapy as a revolutionary joint pain treatment, but this simple technique has been in use since the 1930s, and there’s some speculation that a form of prolotherapy dates back to ancient Egyptian times. 

The revolution is that we’re recognizing that the resources we need to repair damaged joints already exist in the human body — we just need to access and redirect them.

This renewed interest in regenerative, rather than interventional, practices stems from the fact that joint pain is increasing rapidly in our aging population, and solutions are largely temporary, at best.

With practices like platelet-rich plasma therapy, stem cell therapies, and prolotherapy, the medical field at large is finding ways to help rebuild damaged joints for more sustainable results.

At our practice, we’ve long appreciated a holistic approach to joint pain, and we’ve had great success helping our patients to move again without discomfort, thanks to prolotherapy.

Quick, easy treatments

Aside from tapping the human body’s own powerful resources, prolotherapy is a great weapon against joint pain because it’s quick, easy, and minimally invasive. When you come in, we apply a topical anesthetic, and then we inject the dextrose into your damaged joint — that’s it.

You may experience some soreness for a couple days afterward, but this means that your body is responding to the treatment. Over the following days and weeks, you’ll realize gradual results as your body continues to rebuild the tissues.

If you’re plagued by joint pain that’s placing limits on your quality of life and comfort levels, please contact one of our offices in Greenwood Village, Colorado, or Cheyenne, Wyoming, to discuss how prolotherapy can help.