Morbidly Obese with Painful Joints? How Your Fat Tissue Can Resolve Your Joint/Ligament Pain
Almost 40% of Americans are obese or morbidly obese. People who are obese often experience numerous health problems and musculoskeletal problems that arise from carrying around too much weight. Knees, hips, back, ankles, and feet all suffer from carrying excess body weight. Yet with that much pain, it is nearly impossible to exercise to lose the weight to reduce the joint pain. What can you do? If you are morbidly obese, you might be interested to know that a fairly new pain therapy can take some of your adipose tissue and use it to relieve joint, tendon, and ligament pain. Here is how.
Prolotherapy
Prolotherapy started out as sclerotherapy, injections into soft tissues and veins to gain a desired result. The body responds by reacting to the injections as though they are wounds that need healing (which, technically, they are), and then the body's own platelets and healing agents heal the inflamed and injured ligaments, tendons, and bone in the areas where the injections were given. Now, prolotherapy is separate from sclerotherapy, but both end up accomplishing similar goals in relation to the tissues they are meant to treat.
The best results with prolotherapy come from using platelet-rich plasma therapy or adult stem cells taken from your own body. If you opt for the latter, the stem cells are harvested from bone marrow (which is an exceedingly painful process), or from your fat tissue. Being a patient with morbid obesity, you probably want to go with the stem cells from fat because the doctors surgically remove and harvest several ounces of your own fat to extract the stem cells.
The process may be repeated every so often over the course of months. While you are recovering from the injections and regaining mobility, you can begin working on an exercise plan to help you reduce body fat. Eventually, somewhere in the middle of your prolotherapy treatments and exercise plan, your body fat is significantly reduced and your mobility is regained with little to no pain and no joint surgery. It is a win-win.
Setting up an Appointment with a Prolotherapy Doctor
Only doctors specially trained to harvest stem cells and administer the prolotherapy injections can help you. You will have to find a doctor and a clinic near you that offers this type of joint therapy. If you're interested in learning more about your options, contact local prolotherapy clinics such as Natural Terrain Natropathic Clinic.