Prolotherapy in Buffalo, New York

Prolotherapy involves injecting a solution into a joint, ligament, or tendon. Prolotherapy induces your own body to repair itself. You can actually repair, remake, and re-strengthen your tendons and ligaments with prolotherapy, as well as relieve chronic pain.

By introducing a benign substance into joints, tendons, and ligaments, prolotherapy induces an inflammatory reaction which actually causes the connective tissue to strengthen itself. In doing so, it is possible with prolotherapy to have stronger tendons and ligaments than you had before your sports injury or car accident.

Prolotherapy can take different amounts of treatments to be effective for certain people and for certain areas of the body. For instance, if you injure smaller areas of the body, that take less time to heal than larger areas, so if you injure your ankle, your foot, your wrist, your elbow, or even the shoulder, it will take less time to heal than a spinal injury

Patients often worry about the pain they're going to have, but we use local anesthetics so it's not as painful as one might think.

Prolotherapy does involve multiple injections around the injured site. Unfortunately, the more you are injured the more uncomfortable it can be. As you heal, the pain will be less and less.

After treatment, patients do experience stiffness and there is some soreness at the sites of injection for approximately two days. This is generally not severe and individuals can usually resume their activities as usual within the next day.

The timing of having the prolotherapy is important. I think the longer that you wait and allow your body to scar, the longer that it will take for the prolotherapy to work. The sooner you have the prolotherapy the faster and better you will be able to heal.

The duration of the prolotherapy treatments varies from body part to body part. That being said, generally we see some results after just one treatment and excellent results in as little as three months.

A typical prolotherapy session takes approximately 10 minutes. Plus there is a short recovery time in the office before you leave, maybe 15 minutes. Afterward, I think most individuals like to go home and rest. Most individuals notice that their pain is gone after their treatment.

Generally, you receive prolotherapy treatments every two to four weeks. Some individuals who have both neck and low back injuries generally come in for one session for the neck and then in two weeks for the lower back. They then alternate treatments of the neck and lower back again until they get the desired benefit.

The side effects of the prolotherapy sessions are not very common. The possible side effects include dizziness and nausea. These issues resolve quickly though, approximately 15 to 20 minutes after the procedure. The majority of people do not have any side effects.

People want to know when they injure their spine where the injections are actually going. In reality, we are nowhere near inside where the spinal cord is. We're actually to the side where the ligaments are attached to your spinal column, not the spinal cord.