IS THERE A PLACE FOR ARTHROSCOPY?
Arthroscopy is useful to repair complete ligament and tendon tears and also to shave bone like under the acromion when a person has an impingement syndrome in the shoulder when it doesn’t heal completely with Prolotherapy. The number of arthroscopies ever recommended at Caring Medical can probably be counted on one's hands. The number of arthroscopies that have been prevented is in the hundreds.
OVERUSE INJURIES
The traditional model of non healed sports injuries is that often an athletes pain is due to over training. Most chronic athletic injuries are diagnosed as overuse injuries. In other words the athlete is blamed for their pain…they are training to hard. The treatment is then to have the athlete rest. This makes no sense to us because all that happens to the athletes while they rest is their connective tissues including the ligaments and tendons become weaker. We do not believe this is what athletes want…to rest and become weaker.
Histologically (under the microscope) when one looks at non healed sports injuries the tissues are found to be degenerated not inflamed. In a tendon this is termed tendinosis. In the book Prolo Your Sports Injuries Away! slides of various degenerated tissues are shown. Thus a more accurate look at non healed athletic injuries is that these tissues need to be stimulated to heal, not antiinflammed or rested which will just cause them to become more degenerated. Prolotherapy to the affected areas causes an inflammatory reaction to occur, taking a tendinosis and making it a tendonitis. For most people, this tendonitis or inflamming of the tissue can be felt as pain or stiffness in the structures injected for one to two days. Eventually when the healing is complete, the athlete is left with a normal strong tendon after Prolotherapy.
WHAT IS THE M.EA.T. PROTOCOL?
Most athletes after a soft tissue injury to such structures as tendons or ligaments are told to rest, ice, compress, and elevate the area. This is the infamous R.I.C.E. protocol. It is taught in every medical school and practiced in every hospital across the country. Prolo Your Pain Away! was the first book to expose how wrong this treatment is for newly injured ligaments and tendons. Every subsequent book on Prolotherapy that we have written has further supported the notion that the R.I.C.E. protocol inhibits healing whereas the M.E.A.T. protocol enhances it. For those athletes who really want to learn about the research involved in these statements is encouraged to read Prolo Your Sports Injuries Away!.
M.E.A.T. stands for movement, exercise, analgesics and therapy. This is the pneumotic that should replace R.I.C.E.. R.I.C.E. is anti-healing for structures such as ligaments and tendons which have a very poor blood supply. Rest, ice, compression, and elevation decreases circulation and thus the amount of immune cells that are needed to heal an area. By an athlete moving, exercising, taking natural analgesics like Bromelaine (enzymes), and using specific therapies such as ultrasound, heat, Neural Therapy, and Prolotherapy circulation and healing is enhanced. If moving an injured limb is too painful after an injury, isometric (nonmovement) exercises can be done. M.E.A.T. allows athletic injuries to not only heal quicker but complete healing is enhanced. The athletes of the future will M.E.A.T. their injuries and leave the rice for when they go out for chinese.
HOW ABOUT STRETCHING AND OTHER EXERCISE TECHNIQUES?
There are many things that athletes do that have not been shown to enhance healing or prevent injuries. In our book Prolo Your Sports Injuries Away! we talk about (as well as co-authors) the misnomer that braces, taping, and stretching prevent injuries. Of course, everything has its place but the place for bracing, taping, and ‘traditional’ stretching needs to be somewhere besides mainstream sports medicine. For those who are aghast at reading this, please read our book before making a judgment. Most people who consult with us have non healed joint, tendon, ligament, menisci, or cartilage injuries and what they need is not a new exercise regime or to change sports, they just need a bunch of shots into the injured structures to stimulate their repair.
|
