Video Transcription

Most Prolotherapy doctors, including myself, don’t like fusionoperationswhether it’s ankle fusion, low back fusion, neck fusion. The reason being is that it doesn’t really correct the underlying problem. Let’s say the underlying problem is lumbar instability, or neck instability because of a ligament injury. People sometimes forget, fusion, by definition, means they are going to fuse some bones together. If you are going to fuse a couple of bones together, then where is the motion going to come from, where is your low back or neck motion going to come from after the fusion? It’s going to come from the vertebrae above the fusion and below the fusion. So all a fusion operation does is delay a little bit in pain because eventually you’re going to end up having pain in other vertebral segments. You might have a lot of pain in L-5, S-1 then the doctor says they are going to fuse that area. Well, you get the fusion operation and all that’s going to happen is a few years down the line you’re going to have pain in your sacroiliac joints or the segments above it. You have an ankle fusion; you’re going to end up having pain in your foot, below the fusion, or your knee, above the fusion. It doesn’t really correct the underlying problem.

What you need is stabilization, but what you need, basically, is stabilization of that whole area. The best treatment if you have lumbar instability, low back pain, neck pain from cervical instability is Prolotherapy. Prolotherapy can stabilize those segments without totally eliminating the motion. You still have got to have some motion in your neck and lower back to function long term. As far as long term healing and long term health, Prolotherapy is a much better option than ankle fusion, lumbar fusion, wrist fusion, or cervical fusionbecause you’ll stabilize the area, you’re getting the segments above and below it stable by Prolotherapy.

I sometimes talk about Prolotherapy as being spot-welding. That’s actually how Dr. Hemwall, who was the doctor whose practice I took over, he would call Prolotherapy spot welding. If you think about it that way, then when you have a neck problem, generally the arthritis on the X-ray may be mainly in just one segment, but trust me, the segments above it and below it are also affected. With Prolotherapy we can do all those segments. That’s why if you watch the YouTube videos of me doing Prolotherapyon, say, the neck or low back, you’ll see that it’s a very wide treatment, the reason being yeah, we’ll get your main areas but we’ll also get the other areas so long term you don’t need Prolotherapy. Often I’ll tell patients the job of the Prolotherapy doctor is to get you well so you don’t need me. We don’t want you to be dependent on getting Prolotherapy the rest of your life, or taking pain pills the rest of your life. The goal is get some Prolotherapy, get it until you’re completely well, and then just have a nice life. If you have another injuryand you need some Prolotherapy, great, get some Prolotherapy. We’ve had almost no patients in all the time I’ve been doing Prolotherapy, up to 15,000 patients, we’ve had almost no patients need fusion, only a handful need a fusion. But, almost all of them got well with Prolotherapy.