Everybody deals with injuries at some point in their lives, which can lead to pain in their musculoskeletal tissue. Many therapies can help these issues, but prolotherapy is an alternative solution that helps the body heal itself.
Your musculoskeletal system is the tissue that connects your bones and joints to your muscles with tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and bursae. This system is connected to all of your 206 bones, and injuries and conditions that affect the soft tissue of that system can lead to pain that can hinder mobility and dexterity in the bones and joints affected. Over 1.7 billion people worldwide deal with musculoskeletal conditions, which are a leading cause of disability.
Physical therapy is a common treatment for soft tissue injuries of the musculoskeletal system, but prolotherapy is an alternative that has been around for many years and can help the body repair itself. Those looking for prolotherapy for tendon and muscle pain are in good hands with our skilled medical staff at Inner Balance Acupuncture in Westminster, Colorado.
To find out more about how prolotherapy can help you, let’s first look at the types of pain that occur in your tendons and muscles. Then, we’ll examine how prolotherapy helps, and what you can expect while undergoing the treatment.
Types of musculoskeletal pain
You can experience different types of acute (sudden severe pain) or chronic (long-lasting, repeated pain) soft tissue pain in several areas:
Bones: Fractured and broken bone injuries can cause a great deal of pain
Joints: Pain in the joints can create stiffness and inflammation, which can lead to problems with mobility and flexibility
Muscles: Spasms, sprains, and strains are common injuries that affect your muscles
Connective tissue: Sprains, strains, or tears of your tendons and cartilage can also lead to pain and difficulty with mobility
The pain, stiffness, burning sensations, muscle twitches, aching, and fatigue that can be associated with these problems is often the result of conditions like arthritis, overuse injuries, direct injuries, joint dislocations, and fractures. Soft tissue injuries often take longer to heal than bone fractures.
How prolotherapy helps
Also referred to as regenerative injection therapy or proliferation therapy, prolotherapy is a treatment designed to stimulate healing in the body by using dextrose or saline (i.e., sugar or salt solution) in injured areas. This makes it ideal for treating damaged tendons, ligaments, muscles, arthritis in joints, sprains, strains, and unstable joints, as it helps to reduce pain and stiffness, improve function and mobility in joints, and improves strength in soft tissue.
While the treatment has been around for a long time in some form, the science of the treatment is still not entirely understood. However, research shows effectiveness in treating musculoskeletal pain.
What you can expect from the treatment
The outpatient treatment is a straightforward process that takes about 15-30 minutes, depending on the area being worked on. Once finished, you’ll be able to go home. Often, people resume normal activities by the next day, but some mild bruising, swelling, and stiffness may occur in the injection site for a few days.
So if you’re looking for an alternative solution for relieving soft tissue and joint pain, call 720-361-6870 or visit www.InnerBalanceAcupuncture.com to book an appointment with Dr. Ellington and Inner Balance Acupuncture to see what prolotherapy can do for you.
