Prolotherapy

What Is Prolotherapy?

Prolotherapy ("Proliferative Injection Therapy") involves injecting either a dextrose sugar solution or the patient's own blood-derived tissue growth factors into the joints and at tendon and ligament insertions for the purpose of re-growing cartilage, strengthening weakened connective tissue and alleviating musculoskeletal pain and joint instability.  Prolotherapy is also called "Proliferative Injection Therapy," "Regenerative Injection Therapy," or "Proliferation Therapy."

You may be a candidate for prolotherapy if you:

• Have had pain for greater than 6 weeks

• Have to change position every 15 min or less

• Only get temporary relief from chiropractic adjustments, massage or acupuncture

• Have joints that "give way," click, pop, snap, catch or grind

• Have arthritis or degenerative joint disease

• Have recurring headaches, jaw pain, face pain or ear pain

• Have nagging sports injuries

• Have had orthopedic surgery and still have pain

• Have pain that has no clear origin despite thorough examination by your doctors

How does prolotherapy work?

 Essentially, prolotherapy permanently re-grows:

• ligaments - tough bands that connect bones to eachother
• tendons - muscle to bone connectors
• cartilage - the tough, flexible cushioning on the gliding surfaces within joints.

Ligaments are tough fibrous bands that limit bone movement within safe, pain-free boundaries.  Worn, loose ligaments are tender when pressed, and they commonly cause referred pain to adjacent muscles.  In addition, their laxity eventually effects surrounding structures, causing disc herniation, nerve compression, damage to tendons and cartilage, weakening of nearby muscles, and osteoarthritis.  Breakdown of ligaments is a common source of neck and back pain, shoulder pain and pain in any other joint.

Tendon breakdown may be felt as local pain, referred pain, or as pain and dysfunction in the muscle that the tendon connects to bone.

Cartilage and fibrocartilage (meniscus, labrum) are damaged with injury or worn down in loose ligamented, dysfunctional joints. As cartilage gets thinner, movement irritates surrounding bone edges and eventually leads to bone spurs and other degenerative bone changes.

Dr. Thaddeus Jacobs intervenes with non-surgical, minimally invasive procedures that re-grow cartilage, ligaments and tendons to eliminate pain permanently.  Dr. Jacobs precisely injects natural substances that attract your body's own growth factors and stem cells. This is done in some series of monthly procedures, with each procedure re-growing more and more of the damaged tissue, filling in broken fibers, gradually returning integrity and safe, pain-free function to the joint or spinal region being reconstructed. It is an incremental, natural process that is, literally, gardening or farming of collagen, the substance that ligaments, tendons and cartilage are made of.

However, no medical procedure can solve all medical problems.  Not every patient is a candidate. Your eligibility for our methods can be preliminarily assessed in a scheduled phone consultation.  If you are a candidate, then a thorough initial evaluation in either our Salt Lake City or Park City, Utah office will determine how we may be able to help.