About Prolotherapy

Prolotherapy is being introduced for the treatment of chronic pain deriving from a problem with ligaments. A previous form of treatment to strengthen ligaments and form scar tissue was popular in the last century for the repair of hernias. With the advent of modern surgery, sclerotherapy, as it was called, has been reserved for varicose veins and the like.

George Hackett, an industrial surgeon active in the late 1950's, was the first to recognize ligaments as a source of instability and chronic pain. He treated thousands of patients with this method and reported a 90 percent improvement.

What is Prolotherapy? The word comes from proles - a Latin word coined by George Hackett that means to stimulate growth. It has been found over the last 150 years that a variety of agents stimulate the growth and re-growth of ligament tissue. In many instances, it is thought, the stimulation for ligament growth is from an internal bruise, or hematoma, and the induction of the natural healing process. The cells responsible for creating the fibers or 'strings' in the body, the fibroblasts which lay down the collagen, are stimulated to replicate and produce the collagen. Simply put, prolotherapy consists of stimulating ligaments to grow and heal themselves.

The Function of Ligaments

Ligaments are the stays or the 'tie downs' which hold the bones of the body together. They constitute the binding material or 'ropes' which join the bones, crossing the joints. In the spine they are particularly important. The spine can be described as analogous to a pile of bricks bound together in a mobile column by the ligaments which cross between each vertebra and its neighbor, creating from this pile a mobile, strong and flexible support for the body. It is not surprising that a combination of mobility and support occasionally fails.

Stretched Ligaments

Dr. Hackett introduced the term "relaxation of ligaments". In certain instances the ligaments are frayed and even torn from injuries. It is now thought, particularly in connection with joints and the spine, that ligaments become relaxed in part because of the shrinkage of the vertebrae and the intervertebral discs, and only in part from direct stretching and damage to the ligaments themselves. Probably both mechanisms are active in certain situations.

The Spine as a Column of Vertebrae

When the ligaments don't hold the vertebrae in perfect alignment there is a tendency for one or more vertebrae to be slightly displaced or rotated. It is thought the sacrum is particularly prone to minor displacements between the two pelvic (iliac) bones. Chiropractors use the terminology "a displacement in the sacro-iliac joint" to describe this. According to official medical dogma this phenomenon does not occur, but many patients who have the experience of 'putting the back out' and having it corrected with a chiropractic manipulation have first hand experience of something moving. The cause for this abnormal movement is probably ligament relaxation.