Imagine that the front left tire on your car wasn’t properly balanced. Your car would start vibrating as you drove down the road. Normally you would get this checked out by a qualified mechanic, but imagine if you did nothing to correct this issue.
Over time and several thousand miles, the imbalance would worsen, and other parts of the vehicle would begin to break down. Essentially the wobbly tire would wear out the car more rapidly than if the tire were properly balanced and aligned.
Now imagine that the ligaments and tendons that hold together any joint in your body become loose, damaged, or weakened. This is much like the wobbly car tire where proper stability and tissue integrity in tendons and ligaments is necessary to protect joints from becoming unbalanced and out of alignment.
Without proper intervention, the joint would experience the same uneven wear and tear that the wobbly tire would experience. Over time other joints and tissues would be affected, straining other portions of the body along the kinematic chain.
The Best Fixes for Wobbly Tires
Loose ligaments and tendons can affect joints throughout the entire body. Any joint can suffer from this, especially those that are over-used or have been subject to injury.
We’ve all met someone who has experienced a twisted ankle or knee and complains that, “the joint has never felt the same and feels unstable. Anytime I stop working out or seeing my physical therapist, it just gets worse again.” Or the person who consistently sees a chiropractor and feels great for a few days, but says things like, “I just keep going back out of alignment.”
To fix the instability, the joint needs to be properly aligned, put back into balance, and regain strength, and the ligaments and tendons must be restored to their normal integrity. Prolotherapy can help to restore and repair the damaged, stretched, or torn ligaments through a simple, effective, and non-surgical treatment.
How does Prolotherapy work?
Prolotherapy uses an irritant-based solution during an injection that creates trauma to the tissue and forces the local cell population to go through a controlled cycle of inflammation. The inflammation is a normal response to the injection and turns on cells called fibroblasts.
Fibroblast activity is responsible for producing the extracellular matrix and new collagen protein production that is beneficial for healing and repairing damaged tissue. Fibroblast activity is also necessary to create a permanent stabilization of a weakened or “wobbly” joint. Once the joint becomes more stable, the pain fibers and joint dysfunction calms, which often reduces or completely alleviates pain and other symptoms. Patients will begin to see reduced pain, improved mobility, and more normal function as we heal the joint from the inside out.
Learn more about Prolotherapy, or call us at 503-352-4637 for a consultation. We’ll help you get your wobbly joints back in balance.
Dr. Ryan Wood is a licensed Naturopathic and Chiropractic physician focusing on interventional orthopedic and orthobiologic medicine and injection therapies as well as general musculoskeletal and non-surgical orthopedic medicine.
With almost two decades of orthopedic practice across multiple disciplines, he has the necessary experience to ensure proper diagnoses and management of complex cases.
