| |
These injuries set up a healing process called inflammation to repair the injured ligament. The torn or strained ligament is really millions of tears of these strands which are molecules of collagen. The abnormal joint movement also creates many protective actions by adjacent tissues. Such manipulative techniques will often give good relief and sometimes permanent relief. Many of the chemicals released during this phase will be broken down into messengers or chemical signals that tell cells to become active or inactive during this phase of inflammation.
Some of these chemicals are called prostaglandins, which can cause pain at the injury site. As the macrophages arrive at the injury site, they begin to "clean up" the area through a combination of digesting the broken-down cell parts and secreting enzymes, which break down many of the damaged ligament molecules. The fibroblasts will be responsible for the actual repairing of the sprained ligament. When the fibroblasts are "turned on", they rapidly make massive amounts of the basic building blocks of ligaments: collagen. During this phase, the new collagen deposited at the injury site will be organized into a new ligament. As the millions of collagen fibers lose water and shrink, the ends of the ligament will be slowly pulled together and the laxity will decrease. Ligament injection therapy simply stimulates this healing process in a more controlled and less violent way than occurs during trauma in an automobile accident, slip or fall, twist or athletic injury.
Proliferants are nothing more than irritants. However, research has shown that aspirin is not without significant side-effects concerning inflammation. Since the intent of the technique is to create inflammation, pain, swelling, and redness the result can sometimes be more than anticipated. The injections are also painful because the placement of the needle at the fibro-osseous junction is also a tender site. Prolotherapy done by trained hands is an effective treatment method for the pain and dysfunction of ligament laxity.
|
|
|
