Hi all, I am going to start this log for people interested in the effectiveness of prolotherapy. I will update this thread after injections, and possibly upload videos to youtube of the injections. I have quite a few posts about what I’m going to do here already:
For those who don’t know, prolotherapy is the injection of proliferants (I will be using dextrose+water) into injured connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments (Intra-articular injections are also done to regenerate cartilage). These proliferants are irritating to the tissue, and cause an inflammatory reaction to take place. Inflammation is what makes the body repair these tissues, by drawing fibroblasts to the area to lay down new, healthy collagen.
I have chronic tricep tendonitis, tennis elbow, golfers elbow, wrist ligament laxity, finger ligament damage, and ligament damage in my elbows that I want to treat with prolotherapy. Probably going to start on my wrists and see how my body responds.
I am too poor to afford this to be done by a doctor, but I have high hopes for this therapy after >100 hours of personal research. My dextrose and sterile water will arrive tomorrow. I have already acquired iodine, alcohol swabs, anaesthetic spray, and a prolotherapy guidebook. Tomorrow, I’m getting an eyeliner marker for skin markings, alcohol swabs, and a couple boxes of needles+syringes.
Dextrose and water arrived today. $70 DHL shipping charge… but it’s here now. Bought black eyeliner for skin markings, alcohol swabs, and exam gloves today. None of the pharmacies I went to stocked 10mL + syringes, so I may just order them off the internet and put off the injections an extra few days.
The source I bought the sodium chloride from was a bit short, and I only have 4 vials of 20mL sodium chloride. They have no bacteriostats, antimicrobial, etc. and are marketed as single use. If I follow safety protocol and wipe down the stopper with alcohol and enter the vial only using a clean needle+syringe, can they be used on different occasions if I don’t use all 20mL? If not, can I enter the vial multiple times in one sitting?
If not, I’ll try to do some research to see if I can use those sterile water 10ml vials (no sodium, hypotonic) I have around, and how I should adjust the dextrose concentration to get the same effect of 15% dextrose diluted by 0.9% NaCl water.
also, update: 50 20mL luer lock syringes, 50 23g 1" needles (for drawing), and 50 25g 1.5" needles will arrive here early-mid next week.
It’s a bit tricky.
You can certainly enter the vial multiple times in one sitting with the proper hygiene.
Maybe a useful trick is to leave the drawing-needle in the vial and just screw another syringe on and off. Just so you don’t have to use 1000 new draw needles per treatment.
And with use a day later I’m really not sure. Personally if I would been in your shoes I would be super careful about hygiene, but after that I think you are safe to use the vials for another day. Now that I think about it, in the hospital where I worked for a while, they weren’t too concerned about it.
So my advice: rather not, but it’s ok if you have to.
Why dont u try it with your own blood? Ive heard of better results with this as opposed to prolo. ive had them done before and would do it myself but without ultrasound guidance the success rate is much lower.
[quote]dudsman wrote:
Why dont u try it with your own blood? Ive heard of better results with this as opposed to prolo. ive had them done before and would do it myself but without ultrasound guidance the success rate is much lower.[/quote]
Perhaps you’re thinking of PRP injections? If I had the right centrifuge and equipment (and tech knowledge) I’d probably be doing that. Just blood injections are also used, to be honest I haven’t looked into it much. Thanks though, I certainly will. Drawing blood seems simple enough.
It’d certainly be cheaper than having to ship all these different products to me from the states. Thanks!
[quote]
Hi Ray
It’s a bit tricky.
You can certainly enter the vial multiple times in one sitting with the proper hygiene.
Maybe a useful trick is to leave the drawing-needle in the vial and just screw another syringe on and off. Just so you don’t have to use 1000 new draw needles per treatment.
And with use a day later I’m really not sure. Personally if I would been in your shoes I would be super careful about hygiene, but after that I think you are safe to use the vials for another day. Now that I think about it, in the hospital where I worked for a while, they weren’t too concerned about it.
So my advice: rather not, but it’s ok if you have to. [/quote]
Thanks. I guess I’ll do it if I have to, but an infection is something I really don’t want. I’ll try to find more sodium chloride first. I’ll definitely use 1 needle to draw (different syringes) per session though, dextrose too.
Hey Ray, I just noticed you said you had a ganglion cyst. I’m curious to see if the prolo gets rid of that as I have one and everything I read about is that the standard treatments (draining, surgery) have lots of recurrences. I haven’t seen much about prolo being used for them except one article on Dr. Hauser’s site but now that I think of it I will ask my doctor next time I can see him. I think Hauser said he drains it and then applies prolo to try to get the tissue to seal itself off and hopefully prevent the cyst from refilling through the leak in the joint/tendon sheath. Are you planning on doing that draining step first? There’s lots of videos of them being drained and it looks like they usually use a thicker needle (after numbing) to puncture it because the fluid is pretty thick.
Perhaps you’re thinking of PRP injections?[/quote]
No not PRP. Ive had both and yeah PRP would be hard at home without a centrifuge (washing machine on spin? lol).
I meant simple blood injections. They draw out about 1.5ml of blood from a vein and inject it into the required spot. Like i said but you only get full benefits out of them if the needle is guided under ultra sound to the exact spot.
[quote]truth1ness wrote:
Hey Ray, I just noticed you said you had a ganglion cyst. I’m curious to see if the prolo gets rid of that as I have one and everything I read about is that the standard treatments (draining, surgery) have lots of recurrences. I haven’t seen much about prolo being used for them except one article on Dr. Hauser’s site but now that I think of it I will ask my doctor next time I can see him. I think Hauser said he drains it and then applies prolo to try to get the tissue to seal itself off and hopefully prevent the cyst from refilling through the leak in the joint/tendon sheath. Are you planning on doing that draining step first? There’s lots of videos of them being drained and it looks like they usually use a thicker needle (after numbing) to puncture it because the fluid is pretty thick. [/quote]
I’ve read Dr. Hauser’s articles about ganglion cysts and also baker’s cysts in the knee, and he seems to be very successful in clearing them up with prolotherapy. I do plan to drain the cyst first with a somewhat thicker needle (23g) and then continue with prolo with a 25g. The cyst is over my scapho-lunate joint, and I will be treating the ligament attachments associated with that joint with the prolo. Also going to do an intra-articular injection there, as the radiologist said I have some “stress responses” in the cartilage there. I’ve never drained the cyst before, I’ll keep you updated in this log regarding whether or not it comes back with prolo. My doctor actually scheduled an appointment with an orthopaedic surgeon for me regarding the cyst. DEFINITELY going to try draining+prolo before doing surgery though. The cyst itself isn’t that painful for me, but its presence would interfere with prolo injections!
[quote]dudsman wrote:
I meant simple blood injections. They draw out about 1.5ml of blood from a vein and inject it into the required spot. Like i said but you only get full benefits out of them if the needle is guided under ultra sound to the exact spot.[/quote]
Oh okay, I see. Interesting! I’m looking into this right now. Seems to solve the problem of poor blood flow to connective tissues
How did it work for you? Also, how did PRP work for you?
Edit: also, update: needles+syringes due to be delivered on monday. Over the few days after that, I’ll unfortunately have to be doing some somewhat arm-intensive activities, so I don’t want the extra pain in the couple days following prolo. First injection series will be thursday night
Needles+syringes arrived. I’m confident in saying that I have everything I need to do self-prolotherapy now. Went over budget… including the book I spent about $500, or a bit more.
Hey guys, so in preparation for my first prolo session on Thursday, I decided to do an IM shot of water into my delt today. I’m not diabetic, and I’m natty, so I don’t have any experience giving myself a shot or needle.
I injected about 1mL into my right delt just to get accustomed to the feeling. I accidentally was pushing the needle “downward” toward the ground, while being parallel to the ground, while it was in my delt, and this caused a 3 minute muscle spasm. I wanted to inject more than 1mL, but the spasm scared me and got me to stop.
The single injection went okay, not sure how a whole prolo session will go. Considering getting my hands on a benzodiazepine or mild opioid to calm me and lessen pain. Codeine is very easy to get where I live.
Also, yesterday I attempted to drain my cyst. I cleaned it with iodine+alcohol, pushed a 23g in there, removed it, and tried to push out the fluid with my (gloved+sterilized) finger. Nothing came out. Going to attach a syringe to it and try to suck it out, or get a bigger needle.
Bro, be careful! You are getting a little crazy. I was going to see Dr. Hauser, I live in Chicago, but it is expensive and insurance is a no-go for prolo.
I’ll stay tuned, but please don’t fuck yourself up! Maybe you have some one who could help you? Some one with a little bit of medical experience?
I will be careful. Thank you for your concern though.
Unfortunately I don’t really have anybody with medical experience who can help me. In the place of that, I just watch a lot of prolo videos and read everything I can on the subject.
I may be able to gather the funds to get a prolo appointment done by a prolotherapist before I do it myself. If I can get an appointment in within a reasonable time (unlikely, I called the office), I’ll do that first.
Ended up having a lot of free time today, decided to do my first prolo session. Only did the medial side of my right elbow. My golfer’s elbow rarely bothers me any more, but I did want to treat it to tighten any loosened ligaments that resulted from my elbow injuries, and to make sure it doesn’t come back. Only did 4 1cc injections there, was planning to do many more, about 10, but a spasm/muscle tightness caused by the injections in my arm made me stop. It wasn’t particularly painful (the tightness), but I didn’t know what was going on, so I stopped.
The whole process took me about 25 minutes. I’m uploading a private video to youtube soon that I will link here. Would love criticism or advice, especially from you Erasmus! Just going to do a dub/overhead commentary, then will upload.
