By mr g on Tuesday, March 20, 2001 - 04:07 pm:

I am wondering how exactly Fabers method of injections can give 1 months effect in 6 days ?

I mean healing is natrual process that takes the 6 wks or so, so how does his fourmula get round this ?

How do you know that the extra injections in that time are making any difference if it's going to take that time period any way ?

It says on his site " Each treatment session results in more tissue being laid down in the needed areas. "

but how can that happen if it's going to take 6 wks before that tissue forms ?

does this mean more injections are needed to make that tissue form , and if so why should i go for his method when i could go to another guy like Hauser who will achieve the same effect with less injections and less money ?


i just dont understand how he can speed up this process if it's natrual healing process any way
i mean if it causes tissue to form in 6 days so the new tissue could be laid down ontop of it then it would make sense but this is not what happens at all is it ?

i mean that would nothign short of miracle

By Christine on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 - 12:15 am:

My knowledge is a bit hazy on this at the moment, but I did read that you can speed it up by having more treatments.

From what I understand, new tissue starts forming very soon afterwards...I think a couple of days, can anyone help me out? Anyway, I have consistently read that new tissue keeps forming for about six weeks...most doctors like to do the treatment again at that time because the joint has had the maximum time for new tissue to form.

I have read that hypermobile people often need the treatments at shorter intervals...I'm not sure why. I am about to head back to the States to see Dr Hauser to get my treatments at weekly intervals...this is partly because I have to squeeze it in as I can't afford to stay there long term. But ideally I would like to have treatments every two weeks. My reason for this is that I feel better for the two weeks after, and then I start to lapse again. Even though I feel worse, it is probable that new tissue is still building...it's just that for one, I can't handle that lapse psychologically (my mind starts to believe I'll never get better and forget what it feels like to feel a bit better...I do better feeling like I'm constantly improving a bit). Also, during that time I can do a bit more exercise, which is important to my fibromyalgia. Every activity I normally do is very strenuous on my joints and muscles...sitting, walking, chopping food etc..my joints are so weak everything strains them...in that time when I lapse I am straining my joints again and this is counter-productive to the treatment.

So I think there are people like me who for various reasons need to have shorter intervals between treatments, but I have also heard of athletes getting treatments in a short time in order to return to their sport.

I think for some people, every six weeks is better financially, as they get the maximum results before building upon them. I believe that the following is how it works if you have more frequent treatments:

If you have a treatment, by the end of the week some new tissue has been layed, let's say 10% of the amount of new tissue you need (please remember I am totally making these figures up to illustrate my theory). After the next treatment, a week later, more tissue builds and you're up to 20% of what you need. You keep doing this until you have 100% of the new tissue. This takes ten treatments and ten weeks.

Now if you do it the other way...every six weeks... Let's say at the end of the six weeks 20% of the tissue you need has formed. You have another treatment and six weeks later you're up to 40% strength. You get 100% strength after five treatments and 30 weeks.

This is just what I believe, the figures are just examples and I am not substantiating this on anything. Please ask a prolo doctor about it.

But this is how I believe it works, and common sense says it has to. My point is that if you wait a long time between treatments, you may need less treatments as you give it the maximum time to grow the most tissue, so you save a lot of money but it will take longer. You and your doctor have to decide which approach is best for you.

I think if I had my joints treated years ago, it would have been better to wait long intervals. This was when I had pain but still led a relatively normal life. But now I believe it's not...for the reasons I said above. Also because I would personally rather spend more money and be out of pain faster. And if I spread it out it would probably not save me any money, since at the moment i have to have regular massages, osteopathic treatments, I can't work etc.

I believe if you have very weak joints like I do, daily activities can overstretch the ligaments and damage them slightly each day. For a couple of weeks after prolo, my joints are strong enough and my muscles are more relaxed to do simple things (as in just holding my body together without severe pain!! or just moving my arm or little things like that) I feel i have a long way to go before my connective tissue is strong enough to do these things, but the reason I get some relief is that the inflammatory stage, that lasts for a couple of weeks after the treatment, stabilises my joints temporarily. My body functions a bit more normally and I my joints are not constantly being strained by everything. After that fades I feel nearly as bad again ... this is normal until you have adequate strength in your ligaments. To me because my ligaments are still not strong enough to cope, and because the support of the inflammation has gone, I am overstretching them and slightly injuring them in that time...and the next prolo will not be building on the tissue that was formed, but on a slightly weaker state. I personally feel if I waited six weeks, I would end up needing more treatments AND having to wait a long time to be pain-free.

I hope this has made some sense. As I said, this is all my theorising, but I do believe it very strongly for myself. I thought it was worth bringing up these points in case you experience them for yourself and you can at least be aware that different timespans between treatments are better for different people.

By Christine on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 - 01:27 am:

Mr g... Sorry I didn't read the top part of your question properly... my answer was just to address the bit where you said that it takes 6 weeks for the tissue to form...and also for other doctors that may sometimes do prolo at shorter intervals.

I haven't heard before of any doctor being able to get one month's results in 6 days... is that exactly what he claims? The only way I thought you could speed up the process is as I described above.

By Christine on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 - 02:03 am:

Me again! It took me a while to find Dr Faber's site, so I just read what you were talking about. Hmmm...I wonder whether he really is doing anything special, or it's just different from his normal method.

The average number of these accelerated treatments he says are needed for complete healing - two to six - are about the same as I have heard from other doctors about their usual treatment, like Dr Hauser. Someone mentioned on here that Faber had said it usually takes 12-30 treatments, which is a much larger number than is usually reported. A 'treatment' session seems to mean different things to different doctors. With the prolo I received in Australia, I had about six actual sessions of prolotherapy over about nine days. But with Dr Hauser, I had two sessions in one week, and two the next week. In those six sessions here, I received a total of about 160 injections. In two sessions with Dr Hauser, I received over 300 injections. It sounds like maybe he did a more conservative treatment before, doing less injections per session...and now he is using a formula that patients tolerate better so he is able to do more. I suspect healing is accelerated the same way I described above.

I would be interested to know, though, if this really is a faster technique or if it is the same as I will be having when I return to see Hauser for 300+ injections per week.

Also I noticed that it doesn't say you get a month's effect in a week, as you said, but that you get a month's treatment in a week, which again makes me think that he could just be using a formula that allows his patients to tolerate having a large number of injections in a short time.

If you contact him to ask, this would be an important question to pose...for a case where you are treating all the joints, how many injections would you be performing per session (acclerated vs. normal). Also to find out what type of formula he normally uses and what he uses now. I may contact him myself in a couple of days time.

By Bonnie on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 - 10:24 am:

Hi Christine,

I also feel better for the first two weeks
after prolotherapy and then I will feel
worse. I also decided to do prolotherapy
every two weeks to keep my joints tight
all the time. This way will prevent it
from reinjury. However, I believe that it
would not heal faster because most
collagens developed in the first two weeks
are in the earlier stage and also in linear procollagen domains. Please refer to http://www.backpaininstitute.com/rational.htm
for more information). It takes a definate
amount of time to for these linear procollagen
domains to form the tropocollagen triple helixes.

These tropocollagen tripple helixes are strong
tendon and ligament. Therefore, doing
prolotherapy more frequently would probably speed up the results a little bit, but the mature
collagens require a longer time to form.

Bonnie

By Christine on Thursday, March 29, 2001 - 01:30 am:

Bonnie, yes that it was I was trying to get at - it would not heal faster but the results would be sped up, I just didn't know how to explain it. And it looks like it works differently to how I thought. Can you tell me since you seem to know about anatomy, if just say you were having treatment every two weeks, and the earlier stage collagen had formed, then you get treatment again...would the collagen that started to form at the first treatment go on to 'mature' to the tropocollagen triple helixes you refer to, even if you were having more treatment in the meantime? See when you say that I imagine this immature collagen that has formed, and then more prolo means more of this starts to form while the other is maturing. Is this right? So say if you had prolo every six weeks, five times and at the end of that the collagen was mature and strong and you were healed...and that took 30 weeks. If you had it every week, but each treatment still took six weeks to heal and you still had five. So you have five treatments in five weeks, each one completely healed six weeks later, which means you'd be healed six weeks after the last treatment, which would make it a total of eleven weeks. Is that closer to how it can speed up the treatment results?

Also why do we feel better for two weeks if it's not the strong collagen that's formed yet. My understanding is that it's the inflammation acting as support. Is this true?

By Bonnie on Thursday, March 29, 2001 - 06:34 am:

Hi Christine,

Everything that I said based on my own understanding and study, it can be wrong.

We feel better in first two weeks because of the inflamation. Since our ligaments are inflamed, the surrounding tissues like muscle also get inflamed. Therefore I believe the inflamed tissues temporary hold the joints together.

Christine, there is one thing I want to clarity. I do believe the more frequently the treatments are, the faster we heal. However, It would not be too much faster. For example, I can do prolotherapy every two weeks. Some new collagens formed in the first two weeks of my first treament. Now I do my second treatment, some collagens will form around the area. Some new collagens formed in the first treatment would probably will mature to become tropocollagen triple helixes. But I don't know how many collagens from the first treatment will mature and how many new collagens from the second treatment will be formed. Because human body cannot handle too much activities around the same area. We probably would have congestions. I may not have enough of blood supply or nutrients for all activities to happen at the same time in the same small area. That is the reason why I believe it will not heal too much faster if we do treatments more frequently. I don't believe it is the straight math as you mentioned.

As you said above, if you had prolo every six weeks for five times you took 30 weeks to form strong collagens. If you had it every week, you
would probably need more than eleven weeks to heal. I would probably say 22 weeks. It is just my guess and my own opinion.

Bonnie

By Park Griffin on Thursday, March 29, 2001 - 11:14 am:

Some tidbits" about prolotherapy to keep in mind: "Controlled inflammation" is the key operative. If too much swelling occurs the increased blood flow is "choked off" Some peoples reaction to prolo is worse than others. While one person who may have "loose ligaments" that are not stretched/torn from an acute injury, they don't swell up as much as a person who has a torn ligament from acute injury. The person w/ "loose ligaments" can handle sessions that are spaced closer together. My wife is on prolo session nine from an acute torsion injury. Her ligaments which are repairing don't react as bad to the prolo and the doctor can now space the sessions out every three weeks.

Make sure the prolotherapist understands the area being treated. They may be good w/ a needle but they don't understand the underlying physiology of the area.

I have gained a much better understanding of prolotherapy directed for those suffering from Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction. The SI's form a complicated force couple for ambulation and stability. This stable position is called the self-bracing position. Prolotherapy does not tighten tensed ligaments. It will tighten loose ligaments only. Loose ligaments come in three flavors. Physically stretched and torn ligaments due to injury. Loose ligaments due to a medical condition. Loose ligaments due to biomechanical irregularities. When the SI's are in the self bracing position, only the loose ligaments will shorten from prolo. The danger is when the SI's are not in the self bracing position and prolo is done and certain ligaments are loose because of a misalignment, you can proclude yourself from being able to get manipulated into position. It's sort of like putting a cast on a broken leg and forgetting to set the bone.

For all of you out there that have a hypermobile SI or an injured SI, visit this site 63.97.145.150 and read the articles by Richard DonTigny. The "shotgun" approach to prolotherapy in the SI's is wrong in most cases. However, certain people are so bad off they can't be manipulated into position. In this case, it is very important to find a doctor who can tell the difference between an injured ligament and a loose one. Also, if some one has general hypermobilty, it is best to focus on the long and short posterior SI ligaments first. Never inject the iliolumbar ligaments, this is a big no-no. Many prolotherapists do these ligaments for people w/ SI hypermobilty and if they do, they don't know what they are doing. Only, I mean a big ONLY, if your SI's are in perfect position, and the iliolumbar ligaments are still loose then to reduce sheer at the L5-S1, it may be advised to inject these ligaments. The bottom line is this: prolotherapy can be very effective in treating a general hypermbile SI if done by some one who truly understands the function of each ligament in the lumbosacral area.

By Christine on Monday, April 02, 2001 - 07:29 am:

Bonnie & Park

Thanks so much for this info.

Bonnie - thanks for explaining all that to me. You are so right about that the body can only handle so many things at once. But let me just stress again that the examples I was giving and the math I was using was purely to express on particular thing, and not meant to be literal at all. The 'eleven weeks' I wrote or even the proportion of time I wrote were purely illustrative...but I am glad you noted a more realistic time frame and that things don't work in the body in such a linear fashion, I don't want anyone to take my examples seriously at all.

Park - the information you gave is invaluable and thanks so much for the resources. Are you undergoing prolotherapy currently?

By Park Griffin on Friday, April 06, 2001 - 05:19 am:

Christine, My wife is going through prolotherapy. However, I have been keeping a detailed diary of her sessions. I have been "interviewing" my wife and have been consulting w/ her doctor for input. Prolotherapy is not a magic bullet, but, if you can include w/ the prolo: a physician and a physical therapist that understands the underlying physiology of the area, it offers a chance at recovery that may not have existed before. I had never heard of prolotherapy up until about 1 and 1/2 years ago. Both my wife and I are medical professionals and researched prolo for a considerable length of time and came out of it with a good feeling. People like Eppie, who frequent this site, who are testimonies to the benefits of prolo, were the final straw in my wife's confidence to go through with it. The internet has a lot of grabage on it, but forums like these outway any down side of the internet. It has been a blessing. Take care and have a Happy Easter!!!