Why Haven't I Heard of Prolotherapy?

One of the questions I hear more than almost any other, after “what is prolotherapy,” is “why haven’t I heard of prolotherapy?” The answer speaks to some of the problems with the American health care system. When the injury is a broken bone, there is probably no better treatment than that given by an orthopedist trained in the United States. Deformities of any kind receive incredible, innovative treatments from our plastic surgeons. But when the injury is less obvious, as with soft tissue injuries, the American health care system fails us.

Read Dr, Valdez' story and how he came to practice Prolotherapy in Healing Back and Joint Injuries.

Prolotherapy Isn’t Patentable

My experience left me with the realization that prolotherapy was different from other nontraditional treatments. The fact that prolotherapy uses very simple substances to provoke a healing response is one of its greatest strengths and one of its greatest weaknesses. It is impossible to obtain a patent on a simple substance such as glucose. Who then was going to spend the exorbitant amounts of money for large, in-depth studies? Who was going to invest large sums of money to educate and promote the use of prolotherapy among physicians?

Prolotherapy Isn’t a Money Maker

The fact that prolotherapy uses substances too simple to patent is a serious mark against it. That alone would make it worthy of being ignored, but something else makes many in the medical community hostile toward it. Sometimes, even in the practice of medicine, it’s all about money.

Misleading Prolotherapy Studies

Prolotherapy is allowed in the Texas Workers’ Compensation system, but many times it is deemed medically unnecessary. Because of abuses that have occurred in the system resulting in huge costs to the employers of the state, now even surgeries that are necessary are delayed or denied as medically unnecessary. It is the insurance companies that are now abusing the employees.

Competition—Putting Treatment Decisions into the Hands of the Patient

The fall of Soviet Union settled once and for all the question of whether centrally-planned economies are inferior to market-based economies. There is no way a committee of intelligent people can compete with the innovation, ideas, and energy of millions of free men and women. And yet the United States, the greatest bastion of free enterprise, fails to utilize its own system of capitalism in health care. we have our health insurance companies micromanaging treatments, providers, and prices. Entrusting our insurance companies and government to manage our health care system has resulted in millions of Americans without health care, expenses that have been outpacing inflation, and incredible inequality.