Prolotherapy & Prolozone offer pain relief where other methods have failed

Having prolotherapy and prolozone injections in our arsenal of pain relieving injections has given us a huge boost in what we can offer. Only a handful of practitioners perform prolozone in the UK, so we are proud to be one of the few, offering more natural pain relief and healing.

Patients come to us after trying physio and other manual therapies for all sorts of chronic conditions, from neck and back pain to arthritic knee pain and tendonitis. Sometimes they have been suffering for many years with no solution.

Prolotherapy has been used for years. It is a fairly straightforward approach, using injectable glucose or dextrose with some local anaesthetic. Studies have shown that when injected into, or close to a ligament, the healing effect this creates by the body is one of reconditioning of the ligament, fundamentally making it healthier at a cellular level. It has also been shown to tighten up ligaments that are lax, from things like sprains, reducing joint instability and reducing pain.

Prolozone is an advanced form of prolotherapy. Glucose / dextrose is sometimes used or replaced with a homeopathic anti-inflammatory injectable such as Traumeel or Zeel. This is injected with a local anaesthetic, which is followed up by an injection of ozone gas mixed with oxygen at various concentrations. This combination has a substantial effect on surrounding tissue inflammation, as the effects of zone not only block inflammatory chemicals, but also increases the healing of the tissue by re-oxygenating it. Damaged tissues have a low oxygen uptake, which further slows their healing capacity. Prolozone breaks that cycle, rejuvenating the healing process.

I personally have had prolotherapy and prolozone in to many areas of my body over the years. My neck, low back and sacroiliac joint, knee, shoulder and tail bone. For me it has been the only thing that has worked after trying years of cortisone and manual therapy.

According to the data, 75% of people who achieve results with prolozone, keep those results. The other 25% need a top up every few months. I am in the latter camp and have it every few months to keep on top of everything. The great thing for me is that because it’s not steroid or pharmaceutical based, there’s no side effects with multiple applications. Another benefit is that prolotherapy and prolozone can be applied over large areas, and multiple areas, unlike cortisone which is usually applied in one small specific area at a time.

First hand I have seen the results on my own body, but after nearly a year of injecting prolotherapy and prolozone in private practice, I am very pleased with the patient outcomes, as are they. The only down side I would say is that sometimes it takes time, unlike a cortisone injection which will give pain relief in a couple of days. So it takes some patience. For example I had one patient recently who had a raging lumbar disc bulge, causing horrendous sciatica. He’d already had surgery 10 years before for the same thing and didn’t want to go under the knife again. We started prolozone at 2 weekly intervals. His progress was slow but he stuck with it and after 6 sessions he was back to normal. He was more than happy that he’d saved a fortune in surgery fees, plus of course, the weeks of recovery after spinal surgery. Another lady who i’d been treating for months with manual therapy for a chronic disc problem had only limited success. She improved by 70% after just one prolozone injection. I even managed to get in to my mum’s good books by sorting her chronic low back pain in just 2 prolozone sessions.

With all of the injection types we offer, I always ask the patient what they are trying to achieve with their pain. A quick fix like cortisone, or something that takes longer but has more long term effects. The response is varied. Some patients just want to be able to dance at their son’s wedding or be able to walk on holiday. But some really want to get back into a part of their life that they haven’t been able to do because of pain, and this is where polotherapy and prolozone can offer a substantial change.