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DR. MARK JOHNSON, MD, FACS
NASHVILLE PROLOTHERAPY
Prolotherapy Nashville
DR. MARK JOHNSON, MD, FACS
PROLOTHERAPY NASHVILLE
HOLLEY JOHNSON, RDH, MS
PROLOTHERAPY NASHVILLE
Prolotherapy & PRP Articles By
Dr. Mark Johnson
Prolotherapy & Connective Tissue Damage Syndrome
Why am I hurting, and no one seems to know what is wrong?
Mark L. Johnson, MD, FACS
Prolotherapy is certainly an important clinical tool to treat damaged connective tissue—ligaments, tendons, cartilage, meniscus, labrum, fascia, etc. But perhaps a greater contribution made by Prolotherapy is that it sheds light on an important medical mystery. That is, when someone has pain in a joint, or in the neck, or back, or when someone has symptoms going down an arm or leg, or various other distressing symptoms, what disease process is actually causing their symptoms? I see patients on a daily basis who have had the origin of their symptoms misdiagnosed. I hear patients on a daily basis give accounts of lengthy odysseys through the health care system, often involving multiple attempted treatments, including operations, who are not better, and perhaps worse, after all the medical attention they have received. Or I see patients with significant symptoms who have been told that “nothing” is wrong—because all their tests are “negative.” One can read the medical literature and see many purported mechanisms for back, neck, and joint pain. Then read the results of patient treatment based on these proposed mechanisms, and see failure rates that are remarkably high. One can also see in the literature a large group of patients who, at the outset, do not fit into any known “diagnostic category.” Practitioners cannot be exposed to diagnosing and treating patients with musculoskeletal pain for long before a question becomes glaringly obvious. “Are we missing something here—is there a disease process that is right under our noses every day that is poorly understood, or totally misunderstood, by the medical community at large?”
I believe that the answer is “Yes.” Thanks to observations gleaned from successfully treating thousands of painful joints with Prolotherapy, I think I have developed a fairly clear understanding of this disease process. Many of these observations have been made by others in the Prolotherapy community for decades. What has been lacking thus far is assembling these observations into a description of a disease process. That process can then be named and understood by the medical community, and the general community, in a way which explains the mystery of many misdiagnosed and undiagnosed body pains. To that end, here is an introduction to the Connective Tissue Damage Syndrome.
PROLOTHERAPY / PRP TREATMENT AS ANALTERNATIVE TO JOINT REPLACEMENT
Mark L. Johnson, MD, FACS
For the most recent year that statistics are available, the cost of hip and knee replacements in the US was 17 billion dollars. So severe joint pain and deterioration is a frequent personal occurrence, and a vast public health and medical economic problem. I want to highlight three issues here: 1.) A generally incorrect series of assumptions about how the damage develops in a joint that leads to joint replacement; 2.) Where symptoms in these joints are actually coming from, and how triggering healing (with Prolotherapy, PRP, and/or stem cells) in these particular structures can remedy the symptoms, and the underlying condition, perhaps better than the ‘standard’ treatment—partial or total joint replacement; and 3.), why even a strategy of ‘triggering healing’, which has been the sole domain of Prolotherapists until recently, but is now being pursued by Orthopedic surgeons who use Platelet Rich Plasma, as well as by various ‘stem cell’ centers, does not guarantee excellent results. The results obtained by triggering healing are highly variable (as cited research studies, and my own results will demonstrate), and the factors which make the largest difference in results will be highlighted.
Happy Prolotherapy & PRP Patients
Beware The Raised Eyebrow
by Mark L. Johnson, MD, FACS
About The Book:
Assumptions are powerful things. We assume where ‘everyone’ is going is where we want to go, and we want to get there first. We assume that other people are qualified to judge our lives. As we follow the herd, and submit to its scrutiny, though, where are we really going? Perhaps it’s not where we assume. We know ‘the good life’ for us is ‘out there somewhere’, waiting to be found and lived. People even become Christians to improve their own lives and their future. Did not Jesus say, “I come that you might have life, and have it to the full?”
Yet, how many people, non-Christians and even Christians, are actually living a life that could be described as fulfilled, gratified, and satisfied, much less full of peace, joy, and abundance? Why is that? Could it be that we have been influenced to embrace goals and to follow a path that will not produce the good life that we desire? Perhaps, in order to ‘make it’ in this world, we have trained ourselves to become something that prevents our experiencing the actual ‘good life’, even if it is right in front of us. To find and to live the good life, we need to embrace the right goals, follow the right path, engage in the right training, and also to understand the influences that are trying to keep us from living this life, and from showing this path to others. Join us, as we consider how to actually find and live the good life.