If you have chronic pain, it may seem as though nothing works to provide long-term, meaningful relief. Prolotherapy could be the solution you’re looking for, tapping into your body’s natural capacity for healing. Here’s how it works.

More than 20% of Americans suffer from chronic pain, and more than 7% have “high-impact” chronic pain, with symptoms so severe that they interfere with daily routines. Many people with chronic pain turn to ever-increasing doses of medicines — either over-the-counter-or prescriptions — to try to find relief.

Not only is this solution often ineffective at addressing the problems that are causing your pain, but the medications themselves can cause some serious side effects.

At Regenexx Las Vegas, sports medicine and rehabilitation expert Josh Goodwin, MD, and his team offer prolotherapy, an injection-based treatment that taps into your body’s natural healing processes to restore damaged tissue, relieve painful symptoms, and restore function and mobility. Here’s how prolotherapy could help you.

How prolotherapy works

Many people think prolotherapy is a “new-age” medical technique, but the concept has been around — and used in some form — for literally thousands of years.

Prolotherapy is based on the understanding that when your body is injured, it triggers a series of healing responses that help repair damaged tissues. The goal of prolotherapy is to elicit that same series of healing actions through controlled damage near the actual site of pain and injury.

To create that controlled response, Dr. Goodwin injects a special solution that gently irritates the damaged tissue. When your body senses the irritation, it initiates a healing cascade that helps build new collagen fibers essential for repairing tendons, ligaments, and other tissues. The new, healthy tissue also helps strengthen and stabilize the surrounding area, relieving painful symptoms.

What conditions it can treat

Prolotherapy can be used to treat a wide array of painful conditions, including:

  • Osteoarthritis in your knees and other joints
  • Lower back pain
  • Tendon pain
  • Loose ligaments that lead to weakness
  • Nerve irritation

Dr. Goodwin can adjust your prolotherapy injections to suit your specific symptoms and the type of tissue damage you have. The solution he uses is a combination of saline (salt water), local anesthetics, and dextrose, a natural sugar. Studies show that prolotherapy using dextrose-based solutions is especially effective in treating chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Even better, prolotherapy injections can be repeated as needed to treat more complex issues and to keep symptoms at bay. Most patients benefit from a series of 3-6 treatments spaced a few weeks apart. During your consultation, Dr. Goodwin explains the course of therapy he recommends to help you feel better.

Find relief with prolotherapy

Prolotherapy can be a safe, effective way to help you find meaningful relief for your painful symptoms from a variety of conditions — but it’s not always the best choice. Dr. Goodwin is skilled in multiple approaches to pain management, helping every patient find the solution that works best for them.

To learn how Dr. Goodwin and his orthopedic team can help you find the right treatment, call our office in Henderson, Nevada, at 702-986-0921 or book an appointment online today.