Injection therapy provides a minimally invasive way to relieve pain, inflammation to support healthy muscle and joint function. During injection therapy, your doctor delivers a customized injectable into the treated area using a needle and syringe to gently, carefully and strategically maximize benefits to the treated area.
Prolotherapy, which translates in latin as “to proliferate”, is a customized injection therapy that stimulates your body’s natural repair process within your damaged joint or tissues to treat pain in your joints or connective tissues. The purpose of this treatment is to strengthen the tissues, ligaments and tendons that support joint stability. This is crucial because when weakness and laxity of the joint tissues is the fundamental basis of joint pain.
PRP includes components from your blood called platelets that contain powerful growth factors, which are responsible for stimulating the body’s natural repair and regenerative process. PRP is so versatile that it can be applied to any area that needs regenerative processes to be ignited. Applications of PRP include the treatment of damaged or painful joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments, as well as treatment for erectile dysfunction, reduced or inability to have orgasms and female urinary incontinence.
Ozone therapy comes in several forms, one of which is an intramuscular injection. This treatment is done by mixing ozone with a sample of your blood or with saline, which is then injected into the problem area to treat pain and improve function and mobility.
As your body ages, you can start to feel less like yourself. Your older body becomes less efficient at producing stem cells and exosomes, which are key to helping you heal from illness and injury. Exosomes are powerful elements that can restore cells throughout your body. They enhance cell-to-cell communication, which is essential for overall cell health and healing. The information exosomes share can change the function of the cells that are receiving the information. You can think of the exosome’s sharing of data as being similar to one cell sending a text message or email with instructions to another cell.
Messages your exosomes send cells can tell them to heal your body in various ways, including producing more collagen, generating additional healing cells, and speeding up recovery from injury or illness.
Unlike stem cell therapy, exosome therapy doesn’t involve using donor cells in your body. Instead, exosomes are extracted from donated human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and sterilized. The exosome solution contains valuable lipids, messenger-RNA, micro-RNA, signaling cytokines, and proteins. Exosome therapy can be administered through intravenous (IV) therapy or direct injection in the treatment area.
Compared to adult stem cells, exosomes contain nearly three times the amount of growth factors. More growth factors means a better ability to restore and revitalize target cells.
Amniotic fluid is the fluid surrounding a fetus in pregnancy also contains nutrients, hormones, and antibodies. During most pregnancies, this fluid is thrown away after birth. Now, however, consenting mothers of cesarean section babies can donate this fluid because of its amazing regenerative process. It is important to stand out that these cells come from the amniotic sac and are not part of the embryo.
Amniotic injections can help patients deal with issues like ACL and MCL tears, biceps and triceps tendonitis, tendinosis, epicondylitis, knee scopes, rotator cuff surgery, facet osteoarthritis, foot and ankle arthroplasty, acromioclavicular joint inflammation, ACL revisions, herniated discs, AVN of the hip and other problems with the knees and hips, planar fasciitis, post-operative pain resulting from orthopedic and spinal surgery, and the need for tendon and cartilage repair.
Studies have shown that amniotic fluid is naturally regenerative and can reduce inflammation and scars. Amniotic stem cell therapy is a very safe and effective treatment. The fluid contains the growth factors that help to stimulate tissue growth, stem cell activity and naturally reduce inflammation. It also contains hyaluronic acid, which acts as a lubricant and promotes cartilage growth. While cortisone and other drugs only provide temporary pain relief, stem cells actually restore degenerated tissue while providing pain relief. The FDA has certified that amniotic injections are safe for the recipient as long as the product is minimally manipulated and as long as it’s homologous. Homologous means that after the amniotic injections, the product performs essentially the same role in the recipient’s body that it did in the donor’s.
Recovery time will be dependent upon your specific treatment. There can be temporary soreness, swelling, or bruising around the injection joint. Prolotherapy will produce the most soreness and that can be heightened for the 24-72 hours. Exosome and amniotic injections have little to no downtime or post treatment soreness. With all injections, it’s ideal to limit strenuous activity for a week post treatment.
Injections that trigger your natural healing cascade, like prolotherapy and PRP, will begin to repair the body right away. Your experience of pain relief will depend on the condition you have and the treatment you receive. Dr. Minesaki will provide you with a consult prior to your treatment date with all the information you need to know exactly what to expect.
Prolotherapy is also known as regenerative injection therapy. It’s a procedure that uses natural substances to stimulate your body’s natural healing response. It helps to increase tensile integrity of the tissues that support joint function and stability, as well as providing a significant reduction of chronic pain.
What is prolotherapy used for?
If you’re like many men and women, you prefer holistic treatments over pain medication that can lead to addiction, or invasive surgeries, which can be associated with lengthy recovery periods. Corticosteroid injections for joint pain are known to weaken the tissues that they are injected into, which could increase the risk of ligament/tendon tears and also leads to a worsening of joint dysfunction over the long-term.
Prolotherapy is a natural treatment for joint pain and injuries. Revitalize Functional Medicine specialists might recommend prolotherapy if you suffer from:
- Painful or stiff joints
- Instability
- Sprains or strains
- Fractures
- Overuse injuries
- Sports injuries
- Weak joints
- Arthritis
- Knee, ankle, hip, shoulder, or elbow pain
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Rotator cuff problems
To find out if you’re a good candidate for prolotherapy, your Revitalize Functional Medicine provider reviews your symptoms, asks about your medical history, and completes a physical examination. They also use lab tests, X-rays, or other imaging procedures to pinpoint the exact cause of chronic pain or determine the severity of an injury.
What happens during prolotherapy?
Your specialist will inject targeted areas of the treatment area multiple times. The procedure might last a total of 30-60 minutes. There is a numbing spray that can be used prior to each injection for added comfort. If anxiety about needles or the treatment is keeping you from receiving it, please speak with your specialist for a customized approach to reduce pre-treatment pain and anxiety.
What should I expect after treatment?
Soreness is heightened on the first day and then tapers down over the course of 3 days, but sometimes can last longer. To reap the most benefits from prolotherapy at Wellspring Clinic your provider might suggest a series of 3 to 6 treatments over the course of several months. They may combine prolotherapy with additional holistic treatments to help you achieve the best outcome.
Don’t live with a nonhealing injury, degenerative disease symptoms, or chronic pain when numerous naturopathic solutions are available at Wellspring Clinic. Call the office or book online to find out which healing injection therapy is right for you.