jerkbox said:
interesting read...however, I'm not totally convinced.
for a few reasons...from an athelete's perspective, waiting months for a knee to heal isn't really beneficial when you are neglecting your training.
you are going to have swelling, ice nor anti-inflammatories won't eliminate that, however, they can minimize it when you need to have use of your knee.
to me it's common sense to minimize the use of any drugs, all be it most people look at pills as some kind of easy way out...I use them when neccessary. Frankly the content on that website seemed very skewed against conventional practices....
I will agree that the site is a bit simplistic but then again it is aimed at the uneducated. As for avoiding uneccessary meds, thats a great idea. One thing I have noticed with these discussions is that we are often on different pages. We have differing degree's of meaning to various words and hence some confusion. As for your comment on waiting months for an injury to heal, thats where you are a bit wrong. Under normal practiced approaches docs have you load up on anti-inflamatories, this allows you to get by often times but leaves your injury unhealed. If this condition is aggrivated by your athletics and anti-inflamatories become essential to function you have now enetered a very dangerous circle of events where you continually aggrivate and weaken the injured area -> take meds to mask pain and prevent healing, rinse and repeat and sooner or later you suffer a full tear OR arthritis develops due to the weakened joint. While you may "get by" your longevtiy in the sport is greatly affected. Additionally all the times I have had prolo done, it has not affected my training at all I was able to train AND heal at the same time.
jerkbox said:
also, I don't see how one could even perform range of motion movements with a bloated knee....IMO this would only serve to further atrophy the surrounding muscles and weaken the joint further by not being able to effectively exercise.
Cmon, if the knee is that swolen its for a reason and you shouldnt be exerciseing it to begine with.
jerkbox said:
I had my knee treated by a doctor who has worked w/Olympic Skiers, and practiced at a sports medicine facility, somehow I trust his advice more than unproven methods.
the other problem I had with this is they made it seem as though you would be rebuilding the cartilidge in your knee...however, if you read the article closely enough, that isn't the case. So, you will still have a cartilidge tear..??? which will probably only get worse. The HGH studies sound promising...If there was a way to rebuild cartildge, i'd sign up in a second. Believe me, I've been considering alternate treatments like acupuncture, etc to help my knee along.
all in all, i certainly wouldn't trust them injecting shit into my new ACL....and ending up back at square one again. but perhaps treating the meniscus and lubricating the whole joint itself would be beneficial.
and yes I remember high school biology class....
First off all the docs who practice prolo are real medical docs and the reason they chose prolo is because normal methods did not work anywhere near as well. The fact a doc has treated professional athletes means jack shit because all of the prolo docs can claim the same. As for the mthods being unproven, once again this is just not the case prolo has been widely used for something like 100 years. The simple fact its not more comon is due to our wonderfull society and the fact the HMO's cant make any money off it, its too damn simple and works too well.
On the issue of rebuilding cartiledge I would ask anyone who is about to have any sort of arthroscopic surgery to do me this favor and before surgery ask to have the removed tissue sent to the lab to see if it was in a proliferative state. In most cases it is and what that means is it was in the process of healing. If it was healing then why have cartiledge removed? It was removed because it was causing pain but how did it get damaged to begin with? Thats like cutting off a finger because you got a paper cut, its rediculous at best and more often than not not needed. In order to fix the problem the joint needs to be stabalized and once that happnes the cartilegde can heal.
If you are seeking alternative methods then you just found one, stop being so closed minded and do some more reading on it. I have had it done on my elbows, back and foot with awesome success. Like many I trained through the pain of injuries, took anti-inflamatories etc but 6 month later when they were no better I figured there had to be a better way. I found prolo and dove in head first doing all the reading I could find. I had it done and my workouts improved daily, pain faded and my strength returned.
EmptyWallet , dont be fooled by an MRI, while it is a gretat invention it is not the best means of determining these types of injuries. A study was done at U of FL and had huge margins of error for determining tendon/ligament damage. One nice thing about prolo is you can tell exactly what tendon/ligament is injured when the needle hit its, there is no question. Sprains can cause huge amounts of swelling and pain as long as you can move/use the leg you dont have a complete tear and a complete tear is the only thing that should require sugery.
michaelcoutts, I also sprained my left anke very bad some years ago and its never been the same. Prolo has helped significantly for my ankle as well.
Basically put guys, what I am getting at is dont be so eager to go under the knife and endure all these tests etc, most are overpriced and offer releife but not real healing.
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