Prolotherapy: Does It Hurt and Is the Pain Worth the Benefits?

Prolotherapy is considered an alternative treatment for soft tissue injuries, particularly those to the musculoskeletal system. A pain medicine doctor might recommend it for a sports injury. He might recommend it to treat pain associated with injuries to ligaments, tendons, and cartilage. Here is the thing: prolotherapy is an injection treatment. So, does it hurt?

Whether prolotherapy hurts is one of the most common questions pain medicine doctors get from patients. In short, yes. There is always pain associated with sticking a needle into the body. But how much it hurts depends on the patient. The one thing we can say for sure is that it does not hurt nearly as much as surgery.

The Two Concerns of Pain

LoneStarPainMedicine.com in Weatherford, TX offers prolotherapy among its many treatments for chronic and acute pain. The clinic’s doctors say patients worried about prolotherapy pain are usually concerned about one of two things:

• Immediate – There is the immediate pain of a needle being inserted into the body. It is a stinging pain, not unlike the pain of a vaccination.

• Lingering – Lingering pain is a normal part of prolotherapy. Patients want to know how severe it will be and how long it will last.

What so many patients don’t know is that some of the lingering pain is by design. Yes, pain might linger at the injection site. But most patients experience lingering injury pain as well. It is because of inflammation.

Inflammation Is Actually Helpful

In so many cases of treating pain, one of the goals is to reduce inflammation. That is not the case with prolotherapy. In fact, prolotherapy is actually designed to increase inflammation. The idea is to irritate the damaged or diseased tissue.

Lone Star says that prolotherapy utilizes a proliferate – usually something like hypertonic dextrose. The dextrose causes inflammation, thereby signaling the body to the need for healing. The healing reaction is triggered by two things:

• Osmotic Shock – When the dextrose solution enters the cells, it causes them to slightly dehydrate. Some of the cells even burst. This increases inflammation.

• Chemical Signaling – The effects of dextrose on the cells encourage the release of chemicals known as prostaglandins. They send signals to the body that help is needed right away. Unfortunately, those same chemicals also encourage the nervous system to send pain signals to the brain.

The result of the procedure is a natural healing response. The body immediately begins sending its own biological repair techs to the injury site along with all the necessary materials to rebuild. The patient experiences lingering pain in the short term but more complete healing and less pain in the long term.

What the Pain Feels Like

The pain of prolotherapy is like nearly all other injections. During the procedure itself, you feel the needle prick. But doctors usually make use of a topical anesthetic, like lidocaine, to make the injection easier to tolerate. A few seconds after the needle is inserted, the pain subsides. A patient might still feel a bit of pressure at the injury site.

Post-procedure, patients tend to begin feeling what is often described as a deep, throbbing ache as the anesthesia wears off. It actually feels like the injured tissue has been re-injured. Technically, it has been.

Pain peaks somewhere between the first and third day for most patients. It begins to subside by the fourth day and is pretty much gone no later than two weeks after the procedure. Considering that prolotherapy actually encourages more natural healing, many patients feel that the pain is worth the benefits.