If you suffer from back pain … any back pain … even the chronic kind … even the kind that persists after surgery … even the kind that causes you to wince in pain when you get out of a chair … even the kind that chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage can’t cure … even the kind associated with spinal stenosis … I have great news for you. It’s possible to get rid of this pain … permanently. And it works for all kinds of back pain.
In fact, I see about 70% of my back pain patients completely cured. And the other 30% see substantial improvement.
If you’ve been around alternative medicine very long, you might be thinking the only thing that can work like this is prolotherapy. Prolotherapy is a simple treatment where the doctor injects sugar water or saline into the affected area. While the treatment works really well, it doesn’t have a 70% cure rate. And it’s a fairly painful treatment.
But, prolotherapy did lead the way to this treatment. About 15 years ago, I was using prolotherapy to treat a patient with rheumatoid arthritis. She had really bad knees and prolotherapy wasn’t curing the problem. So I injected ozone into her knees and they got better.
This might sound pretty strange because most people think of ozone as something that is in air pollution. But, as I’ve told you in previous issues, medical grade ozone is something very different from pollution.
Medical grade ozone is a gas. It’s a naturally occurring molecule that consists of three atoms of oxygen (O3). Because oxygen atoms usually combine in pairs (O2), the third atom of oxygen present in ozone makes it highly reactive. It’s much more reactive than even pure oxygen. And this enhanced reactivity is what causes it to dramatically stimulate the healing process.
Once injected into the affected area, ozone causes a mild inflammatory reaction. It’s a lot like the saline or sugar water in prolotherapy, only better. In the body, inflammation attracts cells called fibroblasts to the area that’s inflamed. Fibroblasts are specialized cells that repair injuries, such as tears and degeneration. They do this by producing collagen, which can then form new ligament, tendon, and muscle tissue. In this way, ozone stimulates the body’s own natural healing processes. The result is a rapid healing of even the worst injuries.
One difference between ozone and prolotherapy is like the difference between a rifle shot and a shotgun blast. Prolotherapy is like a rifle shot — you have to be pretty precise. Doctors who use prolotherapy know where to shoot it. But if you miss, it doesn’t work well. Ozone is a gas, so it spreads out through the tissues and covers a greater area. If you miss, it still works.
This is important for back pain because there can be a lot of damage in the area — not just one problem. This is especially true for patients who have had back surgery.
I see people that come in and have had surgery and continue to have back pain. The surgery may correct the original problem, but it often creates a host of other problems. That’s because you have to cut ligaments to get in! The surgery to take out the disc problem actually causes ligament problems.
I see a lot of people who are on disability for back pain. Take John for instance. He was in the middle of litigation for a workman’s comp case. He fell down at work and hurt his back. They had done surgery on him. He was on disability. In the process of doing all that, he came to see me to see if I could help him. After a couple of injections, he never came back to my office. He said “My lawyer told me if I continued to see you, I’d get so much better that I’d lose my case.”
To see this kind of result with prolotherapy, it could take 10-20 treatments. I usually see results within three to six injections.
Since prolotherapy hurts so bad, 10-20 treatments can be torture. In fact, the way I got introduced to prolo is when I hurt my own back and the doctor gave me a shot of prolo. It hurt me so much that I couldn’t go to work the next day. A lot of patients who get prolo tell you that.
Don’t get me wrong — prolotherapy is a wonderful treatment. But my treatment, which combines prolotherapy with ozone, virtually never hurts. I back off on the prolo part of the treatment and don’t do it as strong as the prolo guys do. I don’t do it full strength because my main treatment is the ozone.
Also, I put novocaine in there before I start the injections. When you first inject ozone, it can hurt pretty badly too. I invented this combination of novocaine, prolotherapy, and ozone and trademarked the name Prolozone®.
I’ve told you about Prolozone in the past. I use it to treat all types of pain, including shoulder pain, arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and back and neck pain.
By Dr. Frank Shallenberger, MD
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