August 27
Aspirin and Coumadin
For many years I have been performing Prolotherapy on patients who come to see me already taking blood thinners, including Coumadin and aspirin.  Let me first say that in all my years of doing Prolotherapy on patients on Coumadin, I have never had a problem. I do let them know that there is an increased chance of bleeding and/or bruising of course, and on very very rare occasions someone on Coumadin may develop a hematoma (where blood accumulates in the muscle), but I have never actually had a patient develop a hematoma. 

Even if it did happen, the normal treatment is to apply heat to it and wait until it resolves. 

In regard to aspirin, most folks who take this for blood thinning are taking a baby aspirin or 81mg per day.  This amount of aspirin can thin the blood and I have not found it strong enough to inhibit the Prolotherapy. So if you are on aspirin for heart disease prevention, then by all means continue taking it and don’t worry about it inhibiting the Prolotherapy.   Questions? Reply to this newsletter

Five degenerated knees

Three patients representing five degenerated knees underwent Prolotherapy at the private practice of the primary author at Caring Medical and Rehabilitation Services in Oak Park, Illinois. Each patient underwent standard Hackett-Hemwall Prolotherapy to the knee.

PRP Prolotherapy - The Hip
Marlene, a 47-year-old busy executive, is an avid runner who competes in a variety of running events every year, including at least one marathon per year, as well as a number of half marathons and smaller events. She also loves long distance cycling events and weight training.

She has been a patient of Caring Medical for many years and is a huge fan of Prolotherapy, as well as the Hauser Diet – both of which have helped her heal sports injuries and improve her sports performance.

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction
A patient came in with a six year history of pelvic pain. She was diagnosed with pelvic floor dysfunction. She had seen around 20 health care practitioners. Her treatment course had consisted of muscle strengthening, relaxation and reeducation, along with exercises, stretching, postural education, myofascial treatment, various nerve blocks, epidural, trigger point injections, as well as manipulation and soft tissue mobilization. Many of which helped temporarily but the condition just continued.

August 20
Prolotherapy and the Diabetic
As most of you know I have been doing Prolotherapy for many years now, having started in January 1993. In that time I have treated people with brittle diabetes, those on pumps, as well as many other diabetics (on oral pills and just one insulin/day). 

Signs and Symptoms Indicating You Are A Prolotherapy Candidate
#1 – Numbiness
#2 – Pain at rest
#3 – Your Head Feels Heavy
#4 – Your Arm or leg or hip or any body part feels weak. #5 – Physical Therapy increased my pain

Arm, Neck, and Shoulder Pain
What's the Diagnosis?
JoAnn came to Caring Medical and Rehabilitation Services (Caring Medical) with a big stack of medical records. The most common diagnosis she carried from all of the doctors she saw was Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. JoAnn exhibited some of the classic symptoms including pain in the arm, neck, and shoulder. She had a tired feeling in her arm, especially doing overhead work. She experienced some numbness in the ring and little finger that would come and go. One of her doctors presented her with the surgery option. She was looking for an alternative!

Loose bodies on Arthroscopy

Caringmedical Blog
August 17, 2010  PRP for joint instability  
August 16, 2010  Runner's knee

Hauserdiet.com Blog
Over Stimulated Thyroid? Bear Choices
Exercising in the heat

August 13
 

80 Injections
The First Visit for Radiculopathy
A patient came to the office discouraged. He had already had one back surgery and now because of lumbar radiculopathy the doctor wanted to another one. He heard about Prolotherapy and came in to Caring Medical in Oak Park for a visit. The patient agreed that his EMG did show radiculopathy but he had a lot of tenderness around his right sacroiliac joint. It was explained to the patient that we would like to just do Prolotherapy to his degenerated discs and previous surgery sites, but believed his primary symptoms are stemming from injury to his right sacroiliac joint. If his leg pain didn't improve then other treatments such as nerve blocks or Neural Therapy would be done at the next visit. He received eighty Prolotherapy injections on the first visit.

Cervical Radiculopathy
Q. I have done 3 sessions of prolo to my cervical spine, for herniated disc at C5-6 Level causing pain, stiffness and headaches. One week after my last treatment I developed worsening pain and stiffness for 2 days on both sides of my neck. The third day I woke up with severe dizziness every time I turned my head to the side and light-headedness for three days in a row. Can this be a side effect from the prolo a week later? Do you think the compression from disc could be affecting the spinal artery to cause such dizziness?

A. There can be many different and possible scenario’s. Prolotherapy stabilized the spine in one segment, your muscles relaxed but another segment remains hypermobile. This usually occurs when just a part of the neck is treated and not the whole neck. In such a case you may need these additional areas treated. It is generally the instability that is leading to the dizziness. 

Prolotherapy is great at curing ‘cervical radiculopathy’. I put in the quotes because most people who have been told they cervical radiculopathy have no pinched nerves in their neck. Not every pain radiating down the arm means a pinched nerve in the neck. It can be a ligament referral pain from the elbow, shoulder, neck, or thoracic area. If it is from a ligament problem, then Prolotherapy works great. A sign that it is a ligament problem is when the person has a ‘numb’ feeling in the arm, hand, or fingers but sensation sense is fine. This is called numbiness and characteristic of a ligament problem.
 

CaringMedical.com Prolotherapy Blog
Hypermobility in swimmers treated with Prolotherapy

Prolotherapy: an alternative to knee surgery for meniscus tear, arthritis, tendonitis, and joint instability

Diet Helps Healing
When Jean was having trouble healing her back with Prolotherapy, we recommended Diet Typing to ensure that her body is able to support the immune response that Prolotherapy was stimulating. She was about 70% better than when she had started Prolotherapy treatments, but she was ready to get to 100% pain free living.

Jean had Diet Typing and met with the nutritionist on the same day. She told the nutritionist that she had gained 8-10 pounds since her back injury because it prevented her from exercising. She also had low energy and had trouble getting through the day at work

August 6
Osteoarthritis - right knee - Synvisc
I have osteoarthritis in my right knee. I had a steroid injections two years ago which made my pain much worse about 4 months after the injection. Later I had 3 Prolotherapy injections, (Watch where do Prolotherapy injections go and do they hurt?)  4-6 weeks apart which helped a lot. The prolo reduced the stiffness and improved the stability. Then I got greedy and had two Synvisc injections and had an allergic reaction which resulted in bad swelling in my knee.

Prolozone®
Some of our readers have emailed us asking us our thoughts on Prolozone®.
In regard to using Ozone as the proliferant in Prolotherapy, here are my thoughts:

Prolotherapy for the Achilles Tendon
5 treatments – 5 months
Mark was an avid runner and softball player who was struggling with painful Achilles tendonitis. The pain was present for over a year and after no relief from cortisone shots or electrical stimulation.

My MRI is Terrible
Does Caring Medical order MRIs? Almost never. In my opinion, most MRI findings have nothing to do with why the person has pain and is thus the reason for most ‘failed surgery syndromes.’ Almost all people even after surgery are not pain free. Surgery for pain in the best case scenario should be done only after all of the conservative treatments have been tried and failed. This includes Prolotherapy!

Degenerated joints, including degenerated or herniated discs, signify ligament laxity. Ligament laxity or vertebral instabilities are the reason that discs become degenerated.

A herniated disc by definition means the nucleus pulposis (gelatin part of the disc) has herniated through the annulus fibrosis, which is ligamentous tissue.

Caring Medical has helped many people with acute and chronic disc herniations and degenerated discs resolve their pain and disability without surgery. For a person in relatively good shape and immune function (good healing ability) the likelihood of success is even higher. Prolotherapy by stimulating the ligaments to heal, helps the vertebral segment become stabilized and thus eliminates the reason for the degenerated disc.
 

Caring Medical Blog List
Prolotherapy for back pain, SI pain, and post fusion pain

Migraine Headaches and Prolotherapy by doctor Ross Hauser

The Hauser Diet For Lower Cholesterol

Are you exercising, but still overweight?

July 29
 

Prolotherapy After Failed Back Surgery
Many people only become aware of Prolotherapy after they have undergone a surgical procedure for back pain. Although the pain may not be as severe as it was before the surgery, most people continue to experience significant back pain after surgery. Why? Because the back surgery involved removing supporting structures, such as a lamina, facet, or disc, thus weakening surrounding segments.

Prolotherapy injections to the weakened segments in the lumbar vertebrae often result in definitive pain relief in post-surgery pain syndromes. Back pain is commonly due to several factors and surgery may have eliminated only one. It is possible, for example, to have back pain from a lumbar herniated disc and a sacroiliac joint problem. Surgery may address the herniated disc problem but not the sacroiliac problem. In this example, Prolotherapy injections to the sacroiliac joint would cure the chronic pain problem.

Unfortunately, it is common for a person to have lumbar spine surgery for a  sciatica complaint diagnosed from an abnormality” on an MRI scan. The  sciatica” complaint was a simple ligament problem in the sacroiliac joint and the MRI scan finding was not clinically relevant—it had nothing to do with the pain problem. For the majority of people who experience pain radiating down the leg, even in cases where numbness is present, the cause of the problem is not a pinched nerve but sacroiliac ligament weakness.

Prolotherapy Blogs
Hauser Diet addresses your overall health status and ability to heal
Prolotherapy as an Alternative to Hip Arthroscopy in Athletes

Severely Degenerated Hip
and a Fluoroscopically Guided Steroid Injection
Mark came into the clinic with a two year history of bilateral hip pain, right hip worse than the left. The pain started two years ago during a run.

Mark typically ran 28-30 miles per week, but had not run for about two years, since the hip pain started.

As a 51-year-old, he was getting pretty discouraged because he had tried physiotherapy, chiropractic care, electrical stimulation, laser treatments, and all the recommendations given to him pointed him toward bilateral hip replacement. The last treatment he tried was a fluoroscopically guided steroid injection into his severely degenerated hip. The net result was almost no pain relief and an expense of $2700.
 

Watch our videos

Are You A Candidate For Prolotherapy?

 

Prolotherapy, Diet, and Hormones
Living with chronic pain day in and day out can cause discouragement and hopelessness in many people. Fortunately for the people who come to see us at Caring Medical, we can put some hope back into their life. While many people benefit from Prolotherapy alone, there are some that need to correct some physiological imbalances in order to reach a pain-free life. Below is the story of Brittany, a young mother who had been battling chronic pain since the birth of her child. With the help of Prolotherapy, the Hauser Diet, natural hormone replacement therapy, and supplements, she was able to reach significant improvement in just a few short months.

Brittany came to see us after two and a half years of pain and therapies that provided no relief. It was two and a half years ago that she gave birth to her first child and pain in her low back, groin, and hips started immediately after childbirth.

She had an intense labor, delivering a 9 pound baby after 14 hours of labor ending in a C-section, but Brittany had always been very athletic and healthy and expected to recover and get back to her active lifestyle. Six months later, however, she was still in pain and experiencing chronic fatigue that made it hard to get through each day.

July 22

Frozen Shoulder and Low Back Pain
David is a 52 year-old male who came to Caring Medical with complaints of shoulder pain that had been present for 18 months. He began resting his shoulder and was forced to limit his workouts due to the pain. As an active person who worked out regularly, David was not sure how he developed this injury, but felt it could have been during weight lifting or any number of sports. The more he rested it, the worse it seemed to be getting.

Prolotherapy After Arthroscopy
I cannot tell you how often I ask my patients why they received an Arthroscopy and what the post surgery report showed, and the answer is so often “I don’t know.” Unfortunately, people agree to procedures, surgeries, or medications without really knowing the reasons for them.

This is the first of a series of articles I will write that shows patients’ actual arthroscopy reports with my opinion regarding what they need to look for and questions they need to find out.

Let’s look at this very short arthroscopy report from a prominent Chicago Hospital (consistently voted among the best hospitals in the country) on our new patient Barb.

Hip Osteoarthritis
Prolotherapy is a great option for the athlete who wishes to quickly heal an injury and return to the sport that they love. Larry was one such athlete who we treated last summer from a far north suburb of Chicago. He had been practicing martial arts and bodybuilding for years until he hit age 54. It was then that he experienced a hip injury that took him out of martial arts. Now, two years later he was desperate to get back to his active lifestyle. Not only did chronic pain keep him from martial arts, it also interfered with his daily activities and his sleep. Despite a few years of PUSH therapy his pain remained. When he visited an orthopedist he was diagnosed with osteoporosis and osteoarthritis of the hip.


July 15, 2010

A Pinched Nerve in the Neck?
About once every two weeks a patient comes in worried because they believe they have a pinched nerve in the neck. Typically they have had an MRI which some some degenerative arthritis and degenerated discs in the neck and they have tingling in the arm and hand. So is this cervical radiculopathy or is this just a referral pain from the upper thoracic area. How do you tell?
 

Is it Really Lumbar Radiculopathy?
If I suspect someone has lumbar radiculopathy, I generally have the patient get an EMG/NCV test to verify it. No, you can’t verify a nerve is getting pinched by an MRI or CT scan. It can suggest it. The actual physiological test to verify it is an electromyography/nerve conduction velocity test (EMG/NCV) on the nerves. Someone with a true lumbar radiculopathy typically has all of the below:

-More leg pain than low back pain
-90% of the pain or greater is leg pain
-Pain gets to a 10 out of 10
-The pain is unbearable
-Even narcotic medications barely touch the pain
-True numbness or weakness in muscles
-MRI documentation of severe disc herniation or facet arthritis

Very seldom do I see people like that. Generally, they have bad pain, but they are talking fine. When I walk into the exam room to meet a new patient and they are laying down in the fetal position and in obvious pain, then I suspect lumbar radiculopathy. Otherwise, it is a “bogus” diagnosis.

Since ligaments, like the posterior hip ligaments, sacrotuberous, and sacroiliac and lumbosacral ligaments refer pain down the leg, when someone has some referral pain down the leg and doesn’t have the above signs/symptoms, then most likely I tell them they have a ligament injury and the most logical treatment choice for them would be Prolotherapy.

July 8
 

Dr. Hauser discusses why my orthopedist may not have heard about Prolotherapy

Ross Hauser, MD providing Prolotherapy to the low back

Bed rest vs staying active for acute low back pain and sciatica

Watch narcotic pain medications


A Complicated Case
We had a patient come in for Prolotherapy injections for upper back pain, low back pain, and hip pain. She had had a nightmare experience with surgery and was left with so much pain that she had to quit her job and spent most days in bed. Obviously her life was falling apart. After a few prolotherapy treatments she began to feel some relief, unfortunately she would need quite a few more, and since she lived on the other side of the country, traveling to see us so often was getting difficult.

When should I get pain relief from Prolotherapy?

The anesthetic in the solution used during Prolotherapy sessions often provides immediate pain relief. The pain relief may continue after the effect of the anesthetic subsides due to the stabilizing of the treated joints because of the inflammation caused by the Prolotherapy injections, (Watch where do Prolotherapy injections go and do they hurt?). This pain relief normally continues for a few weeks after the first treatment.

Between the second and fourth weeks the initial stabilization induced by the Prolotherapy subsides, and because the initial growth of ligament tissue is not complete, some of the original pain may return during this "window period" of healing. 
 

Follow-up is recommended at four to six weeks after each treatment to ensure an accurate assessment of results, avoiding an evaluation of a patient during the "window period." Prolotherapy is performed every six weeks because most ligaments heal over a six-week period. 

As healing progresses, the quantity of injections required per treatment usually decreases. The pain generally continues to diminish with each treatment unless it is an acute injury which may heal in only two to three weeks after Prolotherapy.
 

Fast Track Yourself to a Knee Replacement: Get Arthroscopy!

January 20, 2010