Many an athlete has retired prematurely because of bad knees

Your knees take a lot of abuse.  So much so that some say the design of the knees are flawed because there is no way that they can stand up to the years of wear-and-tear that they go through.

Knee pain and injuries are a significant part of my practice and I see a wide variety of different patients with knee problems.  Some are young and have growing pains such as in Osgood-Schlatter’s disease.  Others are older and have various degrees of arthritis and degeneration of the knee joint and may be coming to see what can be done naturally to avoid having knee replacement surgery.

Common conditions I see are related to damage or instability of the connective tissues such as the ligaments or the meniscus.  Also, repetitive strain injuries from sports cause the development of bursitis or tendonitis in the knee.

The good news is that prolotherapy can effectively treatment the vast majority of these conditions.  Prolotherapy is so effective that after courses of successful treatments and healing, I have had several patients who have been able to cancel their previously scheduled knee surgeries.

So before you give up the sports that you enjoy playing or resign yourself to knee surgery, consider prolotherapy as a viable treatment option.

Chronic tennis elbow responds well to prolotherapy

According to Dr. Rodney S. Van Pelt, MD in his article in the Journal Of Prolotherapy, there’s about a 90% success rate using prolotherapy injections in and around the elbow.

Tennis elbow, also known as lateral epicondylitis, results from repetitive forceful extension of the elbow. As the name suggests, this injury occurs very commonly in tennis players who create injury of the extensor tendons by hitting backhand strokes with the racket. The injury is so common, that at least half of all tennis players will experience this injury at some point.

Because tennis “elbow” does not really involve the elbow, but rather the extensor tendons of the forearm, this can be a very chronic injury that is slow to heal. Even resting the arm (which is difficult because the injury almost always involves your dominant arm) often does not help, although supportive athletic straps can redistribute pressure on the affected area.
By using prolotherapy, you can achieve complete tissue repair and eliminate pain that results from chronic tennis elbow.

Extreme athletics are hard on joints

The perfect recipe for osteoarthritis is repetitive trauma to your joints.  Well, imagine your knees absorbing the impact of 60 moguls and 2 jumps (each with a force of about 2000 pounds of pressure!) in under 24 seconds.  Now imagine practicing doing that hundreds of times day after day in the pursuit of becoming an Olympic champion.  That’s why it seems to be a forgone conclusion that freestyle moguls skiers like Canadian Olympic gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau will wind up with premature knee joint damage.

Extreme forces like these cause incredible stress on the ligaments and cartilage in the knees.  That’s why the importance of  treatments such as prolotherapy for athletes and anyone with joint problems is so great.  Visit my website to find out more about how you can stimulate your body to repair your ligaments, eliminate pain, and avoid surgery.

Elite athletes use PRP prolotherapy for injuries

Sorry about the lack of activity on the blog the last couple of days. With the 2010 Winter Olympics kicking off here this weekend, I’ve been running around to the different events and enjoying being right in the middle of it all.
You know athletes will use any means necessary to heal an injury and return to competition as fast as possible. They don’t care about the scientific data collected from randomized control trial studies on various treatments. Athletes care about results. So when a recent Dutch study concluded that platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy was no more effective than placebo for the treatment of Achilles tendon injuries, it isn’t likely to deter athletes from continuing to pursue PRP prolotherapy treatment, especially since there has been so much positive anecdotal feedback from high-perfomance athletes who have been treated with PRP.
One such athlete is Canadian men’s Olympic figure skating national champion, Patrick Chan. However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is not completely convinced that PRP prolotherapy is not somehow performance-enhancing. The fact is that PRP prolotherapy involves drawing a patient’s blood, spinning it down in a special centrifuge to concentrate platelets and growth factors, and then re-injecting the platelets at the site of ligament or tendon injuries to stimulate tissue repair. It has nothing to do with blood doping which involves reinjecting one’s own red blood cells to increase oxygen-carrying capacity in the blood which can be very advantageous, especially for endurance events.

So, the benefits of PRP prolotherapy are being questioned yet it is also under scrutiny by WADA as being a potentially performing-enhancing procedure. Is it really that hard for people to believe that you can stimulate the body to heal itself without using drugs or steroids? SHEESH!!!

VIDEO – Platelet Rich Plasma

Anti-inflammatories may be damaging your joints

The cover story of the most recent issue of the Journal of Prolotherapy features the connection between ligaments, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (known as NSAIDs), and degenerative osteoarthritis.

Common NSAIDs include Aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), naproxen (Aleve), and Celebrex.  Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is not included in this group of drugs because it is a pain killer but not an anti-inflammatory.

NSAIDs are some of the most commonly used medications.  About 20-30% of elderly people regularly use NSAIDs for conditions including osteoarthritis.  However, long-term use of NSAIDs has many negative side effects including liver toxicity, stomach and gastrointestinal damage, cardiovascular disease, and even death.

The irony is that NSAIDs actually accelerate the arthritis that they are being used for.  They stop the body’s ability to stimulate the building blocks for cartilage in the joints.  This causes the breakdown of joints and the progression of osteoarthritis in your hips and knees, thus increasing the need for more joint replacement surgeries.

Instead of using NSAIDs on a long-term basis to mask the symptoms of joint disease, consider eating a healthier diet free from trans fats, adopting moderate exercise, and using prolotherapy to stimulate joint repair and tissue growth.

PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) Prolotherapy On The Doctors TV Show

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Prolotherapy is an approach to improve joint health