5 Reasons to Consider Prolotherapy for Chronic Pain

Chronic pain calls for attentive care and management to minimize its impact on your quality of life. Without an effective care plan, chronic musculoskeletal pain can restrict your mobility, drain your energy, and deprive you of quality sleep.

At Naples Regenerative Institute in Naples, Florida, interventional spine and pain specialist Glenn M. Flanagan, MD, specializes in using groundbreaking therapies to support long-term healing and pain reduction for people with chronic pain.

One of those treatments is prolotherapy — an injection treatment that stimulates and enhances the healing abilities your body already possesses.

By inducing an inflammatory response, prolotherapy injections drive the release of growth factors and increase collagen structuring. In doing so, prolotherapy significantly reduces chronic pain for many people with degenerative conditions like arthritis and chronic injuries.

If you’re wondering whether prolotherapy is an appropriate addition to your care plan, consider these five remarkable benefits:

1. Prolotherapy could help you avoid surgery

Prolotherapy is often a viable alternative to steroids, medications, cortisone shots, and surgery. If undergoing prolotherapy results in reduced chronic pain, you may be able to hold off on surgery or avoid it. Surgery often comes with lengthy healing times, high costs, and complication risks that can all be avoided with noninvasive or minimally invasive treatments like prolotherapy.

2. Prolotherapy jump-starts your natural healing process

Using only a sugar solution (typically dextrose) in different concentrations, prolotherapy stimulates your body’s natural healing process to reduce pain and inflammation. The dextrose irritates your tissues, signaling immune and repair responses in joints, bones, and soft tissues that otherwise would not heal on their own.

3. Prolotherapy treats a wide variety of pain types

Prolotherapy is an effective treatment option for many musculoskeletal injuries and conditions, many of which cause long-lasting pain and can reduce your quality of life. Consider prolotherapy to manage chronic pain from:

Arthritis
Fibromyalgia
Tendinopathy and tendonitis
Degenerative disc disease
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Sciatica
Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ)
Sacroiliac joint disorders
Tennis elbow
Golfer’s elbow

A detailed evaluation at Naples Regenerative Institute can help Dr. Flanagan determine if prolotherapy is a good fit for treatment of your chronic pain.

4. Prolotherapy is precise

Thanks to live ultrasound and x-ray guidance during procedures, prolotherapy injections go exactly where they need to. Increased accuracy will reduce risks and increase the effectiveness of these treatments

Additionally, prolotherapy is a very low-risk procedure that doesn’t typically cause any side effects.

5. Combine prolotherapy with other treatments

When dealing with chronic pain, a multifaceted approach is usually best. Prolotherapy fits seamlessly into a comprehensive treatment plan tailored to your needs. You can continue physical therapy and other beneficial treatments as you take part in prolotherapy to manage your pain.

Dr. Flanagan often recommends MLS laser therapy and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy in combination with prolotherapy, resulting in an enhanced healing response. Dr Flanagan uses highly concentrated PRP that introduces billions of extra platelets to the region to aid tissue repair and reduce pain. For some injuries, bone marrow concentrate with stem cells can be beneficial.

Get in touch

Don’t let chronic musculoskeletal pain take total control over your quality of life. To learn if prolotherapy can help you manage your chronic pain, call Naples Regenerative Institute or book a treatment consultation online today.