If anybody knows about this I would be most grateful.
"Why are there so many athletes with injuries and why are so many of them succumbing to surgery?" It's not hard to understand the reasons when you consider all the myths that have been perpetuated in treating sports injuries.
Probably because tendons, cartilage, and ligaments don't repair themselves. It's something beyond a "myth," BTW, when one considers the speed with which athletes are back in the game after what used to be career-ending injuries....
Any alleged treatment which mentions things like "structures" without specifying any, or their components, sounds suspicious to me.
Any discussion of an alleged treatment which asks broad questions- "why are there so many injured athletes" without specifying a particular type of injury, and the organ or tissue which is injured (broken leg? torn muscle? torn ligament?) sounds suspicious to me.
Any alleged treatment that uses a phrase like "natural substances" (cobra venom? Dung? Exudate from a syphlitic lesion?) without specifying them sounds suspicious to me.
my $.02
Mind you, my criticisms are based on abstracts, so I didn't have complete access to their statistical analysis, but both studies had low numbers of patients. This presents problems regarding statistical validity of their conclusions. Also, both studies only compared prolotherapy to placebo (saline) rather than to existing therapies. And, lastly, both studies were by the same pair of authors, so nobody else has independently corroborated their findings.
Prolotherapy is the injection of a dextrose (sugar water) solution into the joint capsule, in order to stimulate inflammation which the authors believe will accelerate healing. This seems like a crackpot theory to me. I'm a fellowship trained M.D. who puts in cochlear implants (although I didn't install Rush Limbaugh's), so I'm not specifically an orthopedic sports doc, but -- hey, it doesn't pass the smell test. Caveat emptor.
While searching for ligament healing info, I came across extensive mention of prolotherapy. There was no scientific info given with any of these articles, only remarkable claims of substantially tougher(higher modulus and yield strength) ligaments as a final result of the therapy. The FDA only permits a limited number of practitioners to do it.
The effectiveness of prolotherapy has not been verified by scientifically controlled studies. As early as 1978, the Medical Procedures Appropriateness Program of the Council of Medical Specialty Services (CMSS), based on input from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the American College of Physicians, concluded that prolotherapy had not been shown to be effective. Furthermore, the clinical practice guideline on "Acute Low Back Problems in Adults" by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research does not recommend ligamentous and sclerosant injections in the treatment of patients with acute low back pain.
According to Martindale's Extrapharmacopoeia, Sarapin is a brand name for an extract of the pitcher plant, or Sarracenia Purpurea.Martindale's notes that "the roots and leaves of Sarracenia Purpurea have been used in the form of an aqueous distillate, administered by local injection, for neuromuscular or neuralgic pain."
Sarapin is typically administered in conjunction with prolotherapy. There is inadequate evidence of the effectiveness of Sarapin for pain. A MEDLINE search identified only two published studies of Sarapin for pain relief. One clinical study involving 180 patients found greater pain relief in patients administered facet blocks with Sarapin than those without.Another study, using an animal model, found Sarapin to have no effect.
The term "prolotherapy" is a derivation of "proliferative injection therapy" and is also known as sclerotherapy. The practice of prolotherapy is used by doctors of osteopathy and other physicians to treat a number of different types of chronic pain. Prolotherapy consists of a series of intraligamentous and intratendinous injections of solutions in trigger points near the pained area to induce the proliferation of new cells.
Proponents of this treatment suggest that looseness in the supporting ligaments and tendons around the joints causes the pain, inducing the muscles to contract against the ligament and irritate the nerve endings. The physicians using this treatment method for low back pain believe the ligament laxity to be concentrated in the sacroiliac joint. During a physical examination a physician will identify trigger points generally in the muscles overlying the sacroiliac joint. The physician then may inject proliferant substances into the supporting ligament and tendon tissue.
The practice of sclerotherapy or prolotherapy to produce dense fibrous tissue in an effort to strengthen the attachment of ligaments and tendons is not new. Forms of this therapy apparently date back to Hippocrates, however, prolotherapy recently found favor with osteopaths following the teachings of George Hackett, MD, who in 1939 began using a local injectable irritant to initiate the healing process. It was Dr. Hackett who coined the term "prolotherapy" because sclerotherapy implied scar formation, which, according to Dr. Hackett, did not occur with prolotherapy. Nevertheless, both processes use trigger point injections to form new cells in an effort to support weakened muscles. Although the method has been in use for some time, to date there is no strong clinical evidence to support the efficacy of the treatment.
Prolotherapy injections are intended to mimic the natural healing process by causing an influx of fibroblasts that synthesize collagen at the injection site, leading to the formation of new ligament and tendon tissue. The newly produced collagen is intended to support the injured or loosened ligaments, creating a more stable and strong muscle base, in the process, alleviating pain.
There are three classes of proliferant solutions used to initiate inflammation: chemical irritants (e.g. phenol), osmotic shock agents (e.g. hypertonic dextrose and glycerin), and chemotactic agents (e.g. morrhuate sodium, a fatty acid derivative of cod liver oil). The two studies supplied by the requestor used a dextrose-glycerine-phenol solution.
I would not do it for myself or my family.