Hi everyone,
Been having pc issues & of course MAV issues so not able to get online as much as Id like. Barometric pressure has dropped here in the UK & I’ve had a migraine for 3 days straight, dizziess worse than ever… according to Dr Surrenthiran the phone lines at his office have been lit up like a Christmas tree again this year (same thing happened when it snowed last year) I had a 23 day migraine (came & went, very random!) - God willing it won’t go on that long this year :?
Anyway… can’t sleep (of course) and Googling as always… I came across something called Prolotherapy. Anyone ever hear of it??? Apparently it is used for sports injurys, but people swear by it for dizziness & migraines… I can see a needle and go weak but if it works, I’m game… would be interesting to see if anyone has tried this & if so did it help?
Eeoow!! Looks pretty barbaric, would need a bit of evidence for this before I let someone attack me with a syringe that size. Did a quick search for “migraine + prolotherapy” on a couple of medical search engines and drew a total blank, it only seems to come up for musculoskeletal problems.
I may well have missed something but unless you can find some randomised controlled trials published in reputable medical journals supporting this, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.
Prolotherapy involves the treatment of two specific kinds of tissue: tendons and ligaments. A tendon attaches a muscle to the bone and involves movement of the joint. A ligament connects two bones and is involved in the stability of the joint. A strain is defined as a stretched or injured tendon; a sprain, a stretched or injured ligament. Once these structures are injured, the immune system is stimulated to repair the injured area. Because ligaments and tendons generally have a poor blood supply, incomplete healing is common after injury. This incomplete healing results in these normally taut, strong bands of fibrous or connective tissue becoming relaxed and weak. The relaxed and inefficient ligament or tendon then becomes the source of chronic pain and weakness.
The greatest stresses to the ligaments and tendons are where they attach to the bone, the fibro-osseous junction. The most sensitive structures that produce pain are the periosteum (covering of the bone) and the ligaments. It is important to note that in the scale of pain sensitivity (which part of the body hurts more when injured), the periosteum ranks first, followed by ligaments, tendons, fascia (the connective tissue that surrounds muscle), and finally muscle. Cartilage contains no sensory nerve endings. If you are told that your cartilage is the cause of your pain, you have been misinformed; the cartilage cannot hurt because they contain no pain sensing nerves. If there is cartilage damage, the ligaments are typically the structures that hurt. Ligaments are weakest where they attach to bone. The periosteum is the most sensitive area to pain and the ligaments second. It is now easy to understand why this area hurts so much. This is where the Prolotherapy injections occur, and thus eliminate the chronic pain of many conditions including arthritis, mechanical low back pain, degenerative disc disease, cartilage injury, and sports injuries.
. would be interesting to see if anyone has tried this & if so did it help?
x
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I tried it, which is to say that my highly respected physiatrist (D.O.) tried it with me for joint pain. Didn’t do squat. But then neither did acupuncture, which NIH/NCCAM has found to show some benefit for some conditions.
Anyone looked into this lately? I found this provider – caringmedical in FL. I watched one of his youtube videos. When they seem so sure of themselves, it feels like more quackery than anything. Interested to hear if anyone has tried or researched.
Never even heard of it. I’m thinking had it had any bearing on VM with all the extensive reading I’ve done over the last ten? Maybe years I might just have come across a reference. Seems to me there’s a lot of Alternative treatments banded about that probably amount to complete tosh. And a lot of people only too keen to stick syringes full of ‘stuff’ into anybody willing to let them.
If the idea is pain relief and it works I’d have thought it would have been incorporated into mainstream medicine before now after more than 12 years. If the purpose is another then I am way off track and need an easy to follow diagram by way of explanation.
Pertinent question: if treating migraine, er, where do they stick their needles?
Like you I’d be interested to hear from a forum member who has experience of Prolotherapy. I’m all ears.
PS: just noticed the ‘Caring Medical’ reference. I’ve been wondering about them ever since I first came across them couple weeks back.
Helen!! It’s not tosh. Funny word though to my American ears. Sounds like nosh which is tasty food. Anyhoo - this member has tried it. But not for migraine.
There’s sort of four or five phases to pain management of the joints that progressively get more invasive.
I was offered surgery but chose not to go there because the risks outweigh the benefits for me. Degeneration and chronic pain and immobility sounds better than potentially that anyway plus loss of several critical functions all gathered around the pelvis.
The theory behind prolotherapy is that your body for whatever reason stops healing a wound and lives in a state of constant low level inflammation. (Think arthritis). Prolotherapy represents an acute wound to the joint to force your body to start the healing process over again but in a very targeted manner.
The next step up is platelet rich plasma injections. Instead of a foreign irritant, the pain specialist injects a reduction of your own blood into the joint. This reduction is the platelets in the plasma from your blood. These platelets are like building materials your body uses to rebuild after the new trauma. They’re like tofu. They can be anything your body needs.
If that fails, they go for stem cells which are even more versatile.
I skipped prolotherapy and went straight to PRP injections. Mixed results. My pelvis is too unstable with too many wrecked parts to hold without surgery. The PRP did help in my lumbar spine and sacroiliac joints - along with more tosh in the form of non-surgical spinal decompression and an off label rheumatoid arthritis drug. Still a total mess, but my quality of life is better. Pain is more 2-4 most of the time than the 6-7 it was a year ago.
That said, I can’t think of an application for migraine.
Well done Em. At least you were able to correct my misapprehension with personal experience. It’s amazing how much stuff there is out there one never even gets to hear mention of. From what I read I could - just about - follow the procedure but, like you, couldn’t see an application for migraineurs. Maybe in due course someone will call by and enlighten us further. That would be good.
but if it works, I’m game… would be interesting to see if anyone has tried this & if so did it help?