In other words,
Prolotherapy works fine for the overweight person, they just need to be a
little more patient. The largest person I have done Prolotherapy on? I
would say they weighed over 500 pounds. If a 600 pound person came in or
more I would have no hesitation in treating them as long as they understood
the above.
The body has tremendous regenerative capabilities but one
must never forget the fact that many different factors
affect
connective tissue healing. Perhaps, the most
overlooked factor in healing is
nutritional. Generally by
the time someone is seen at
Caring Medical in
Oak Park, Illinois, they have seen ten health care
clinicians and often none of them have considered any of the
10 causes as to why you don’t heal. The first factor that
needs to be considered is nutritional.
By definition, pain means something is weak or injured,
assuming a musculoskeletal cause for the pain. Most people
can tell the date and time when their pain started. “I was
in a car accident on….I fell down the stairs on….I was
playing a lot of
golf
when…" Most people with pain know what
started the pain they just want to find out how to end it!
The first place to start is to look at what you are putting
in your mouth to nourish your body.
In just about
every nutritional study on Americans, nutritional
deficiencies are found. To grow ligaments,
tendons, or for
that matter to heal any bodily structure, it is safe to say
that the whole gamut of essential nutrients are needed. This
means the spectrum of amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins,
minerals, and trace elements that are supposed to be
consumed in a healthy diet. Unfortunately the average person
in America gouges on fried fatty foods in between the
nutrient-deficiency binges of bread and pasta, which are
helped down the old windpipe with sugar-ladened soft drinks.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea for the person in
chronic pain to
get some
nutritional testing done to look for nutrient
deficiencies. For the person with
chronic pain, perhaps the
main reason you don’t heal is because you don’t eat right!
Too many carbohydrates is the number one reason people are
overweight. The more weight you have the stronger your
joints and ligaments have to be to support the weight. So
weight loss is a part of curing chronic pain. What you don’t
know is that one sugar load hampers
immune system function for four
hours! So the person that has a soda every few hours is
suppressing their
immune system all day. This is the same
immune system that heals your connective tissues. If you
want to heal, cut out the sugar and take control of your
diet.
What is the Effect of Obesity on Healing?
Ligaments, which provide stability to the joints, resistance
stretching (good tensile strength). Tensile strength of
ligaments is much less than the tensile strength of bone.
Thus, when a joint is stressed, the ligament will be injured
prior to the bone because it is the weak link of the
bone-ligament complex the ligament will stretch and sprain
before the bone will
fracture. The area where the ligament
is injured is the
fibro-osseous junction.
The strength of the ligament required to maintain the
stability of the joint depends directly on the pressure
applied. The heavier the force applied to the joint, the
stronger the ligament must be to hold the joint in place.
This explains why overweight people, exhibiting a positive
"basketball-belly sign,” are prone to chronic pain and
impaired healing. The excess weight places increased
pressure on the ligaments, especially in the
lower
back,
hip, and knee areas. These ligaments stretch and weaken and
begin the process known as
osteoarthritis.
Weight loss is effective for decreasing the pain of
osteoarthritis and chronic ligament and
tendon weakness
because it diminishes the stress on the joints.
Stabilization and movement of the joint requires less work
by the ligaments and tendons, resulting in reduced pain.
