|
PROLOTHERAPY FOR BURSITIS
Ross Hauser, M.D.
 Almost everyone who comes to Caring Medical for
Prolotherapy
for the treatment of bursitis doesn’t have bursitis. Once in my life I had a
true bursitis and when I did, I couldn’t let anything even touch the skin over
it because it was that painful. The person who lets a doctor palpate the area
with a lot of pressure with the thumb does not have bursitis. They have
ligament sprain or
tendon strain or other soft
tissue injury.
Regardless if the person has a true bursitis or some other injury causing the
pain, the structure that needs treatment is either a ligament, muscle or
tendon. True bursitis is an inflammation of the bursa or fluid filled sac that
is between a bone and a soft tissue structure. One can have an olecranon
bursitis (bursal sac inflamed between the elbow bone and the triceps tendon),
greater trochanteric
bursitis (bursal sac inflamed between the hip bone and glutei muscle
attachments), calcaneal bursitis (bursal sac inflamed between the calcaneus and
Achilles tendon),
and numerous other bursitis’s. The bursal sac becomes inflamed because of
injury to the soft tissue structures. The bursal sacs are there to decrease the
friction of the soft tissue structure and the underlying bone. They let the
tendon or muscle glide across the bone more easily.
As mentioned above, most people diagnosed with bursitis don’t have it. Most
have been given
steroid shots by the
orthopedists to decrease the inflammation of the bursitis. Since they didn’t
have a true bursitis it is no wonder the steroid shot didn’t work to eliminate
the pain. What it did do though is cause degeneration of the ligament, tendon,
or muscle around which it was injected. That is what steroids do to soft tissue
structures, they weaken them. They inhibit
fibroblastic
proliferation or the process by which soft tissue structures such as ligaments,
tendons and muscles grow and repair.
Prolotherapy is the treatment to stimulate the body to repair painful
areas. True bursitis is painful as is ligament, tendon and muscle injuries. For
the person diagnosed with bursitis, consider that the diagnosis maybe wrong. If
you can touch the area, a visit to a Prolotherapist will reveal what structure
is causing the pain.
In the elbow it is typically the extensor tendons or annular ligament,
in the ankle region it is the Achilles tendon and in the hip it is the soft
tissue structures that attach to the greater trochanter including the glutei
muscles. Prolotherapy to these soft tissue structures stimulates them to
repair. Once they are fully repaired the ‘bursitis’ pain resolves. In our
opinion, a better approach for true bursitis is Prolotherapy and
Neural Therapy. It can take
up to six sessions, but most often three or four sessions.
|
Our
Prolotherapy Books - 
POWER
OVER PAIN