RADIO SHOW TRANSCRIPTS

Dr. Gene: Good morning, you are listening to the Dr. Marc Darrow show brought to you by NeocellTM corporation, the makers of Immucell with Kolla2. My name is Dr. Gene and I have the privilege of co-hosting the Dr. Marc Darrow show with Dr. Darrow.

Dr. Darrow is a board certified physiatrist, he specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation. He is the medical director of Darrow Wellness Institute in West Los Angeles.

Dr. Darrow's focus of his practice is on musculo-skeletal injury. He is terrific in pain management. As an avid sports enthusiast, Dr. Darrow discovered Prolotherapy after an injury on the golf course which caused him to suffer the kind of chronic pain that afflicts millions of Americans. And a skeptical Dr. Darrow became a believer in the therapeutic healing powers of Prolotherapy and trigger point injections, only after one treatment, since then he has devoted his practice to Prolotherapy, a little known natural therapy that is really revolutionizing the way we treat chronic pain.

It is always a pleasure Dr. Darrow to have a session with you and talk about such a technique that really takes the surgery out of pain. 

Dr. Darrow: That is exactly what we are trying to do Dr. Gene, we are actually starting to see the numbers of surgeries, elective orthopedic surgeries, on the decline. More and more people are getting fed up with the idea, that even though it (surgery) was the seduction of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, they are finding now that these surgeries don't seem to have long lasting effect and very often at our clinic we see people who have had bad effects from them and we now have Prolotherapy which is a very non-evasive technique that stimulates the immune system to rebuild the collagen and the cartilage inside of joints so surgery is not necessary. 

It (Prolotherapy) is something we really need to educate the public about, this is a new therapy that is really coming to the forefront, unfortunately the medical community doesn't know much about it yet but the public is learning more and more about it and they are bringing this to their doctors and their doctors call me to learn how to do it. 

Dr. Gene: Let's go ahead and find out what type of physician you are what is your specialty and where you were trained.

Dr. Darrow: Well I was trained at UCLA in physical medicine and rehabilitation. The study of orthopedics, most of us have done orthopedic surgery. I did a lot of that in my training, then I switched over to the physical aspect of rejuvenating the body in different methods, we use physical therapy, chiropractic, we use MedX, strengthening equipment for the neck and the back. And we treat everything from the head to the toe in the musculo-skeletal system. Prolotherapy is a series of injections of mild dextrose solution with some local anesthetic that stimulates the body to bring fibroblasts and chondroblasts to the area to help grow more of the tissue and strengthen up the joints and the ligaments and tendons:

Dr. Gene: Prolotherapy is so useful for so many types of musculo-skeletal pain and I would like to go over some of these pains-arthritis, back pain, neck pain, Fibromyalgia, sports injuries for those weekend warriors. Whiplash injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, degenerative or herniated discs, TMJ, sciatica, headaches and migraines.

Dr. Darrow: Well it worked on me so it should work on a lot of people.

Dr. Gene: I understand that you were an excellent golf player that sometimes like to hit the ground (instead of the ball).

Dr. Darrow: Well not that excellent a player. Prolotherapy has worked for me on many parts of my body-my wrist, you are right, from a golf injury which was healed by about 50% the next day by the injections, after that I started practicing on my patients and our clinic which is probably the biggest Prolotherapy clinic in the world has done thousands of patients, there are three of us now in the clinic doing this therapy and we have people waiting in line to have it done. 

After my wrist I did my elbows and my shoulder. I have had lots of sports injuries in my life starting out with gymnastics and high-speed water skiing and snow skiing. All the fun stuff has seemed to taken a toll on my body, tennis, you name it, so we get people in from all walks of life, not just pro athletes, being in LA we get movie stars and directors and producers too. It is really for everyone, weekend warriors, a lot of older people that have arthritis, it works great for that to regrow some of the cartilage tissue, it works for just about anything on the body that is musculo- skeletal oriented.

Dr. Gene: Is it painful?

Dr. Darrow: No, it really isn't painful at all, we use an anesthetic, a dermajet before we inject and most people don't even know they got the injection. 

Dr. Gene: Is there any type of interactions with the chemicals that you use?

Dr. Darrow: No because it is really not chemical, we use dextrose, sugar. Very dilute just a small amount, less than we eat in a cracker so it has no effect on diabetes. I know that when I had it myself, and I am lucky that I can inject myself, the front part of my body at least, even though I have had my neck and my back done by other people, I sometimes fell a little stiffness afterwards but that is just about it. 

Dr. Gene: How does sugar water have a chance of solving the painful condition?

Dr. Darrow: It is a very beautiful process, it inflames the area and gives it a second chance to heal. Sort of creating a mini injury and many of these areas are sore because they don't heal up because they don't have a good blood supply to them. So we initiate a little inflammation that brings a new blood supply to the area and these inflammatory cells that grow more tissue actually rejuvenates the tissue and studies show on biopsy that the tissue, the ligaments, become 50% thicker and 200-400% stronger.

Dr. Gene: Now here you are taking something, you have an inflammation in the first place, and now you are creating a second inflammation on top of that.

Dr. Darrow: Well we are taking a very low level of inflammation that is very painful and we are just stepping it up just a bit to get it over the hump to create a healing response.

Dr. Gene: But isn't non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDS) something that can do that?

Dr. Darrow: No, not at all, as a matter of fact it blocks the healing process, I never tell people to take NSAIDs, it is the worst thing in the world you can do especially after an injury because you want that swelling and inflammation to bring these cells to the area to regrow tissue. That is the way the body is made to heal.

CALLER: I have lower back pain that has been pretty persistent for I would say a couple of years, I am relatively young but I did a lot of dancing and skating when I was younger. It is like a tightness all the time and it feels like I have to pop it or stretch it.

Dr. Darrow: Is it mainly along the low back, like the belt line? 

CALLER: Yes, by the kidney area.

Dr. Darrow: This is common, very common among athletes because these areas get stretched out and the ligaments that hold the pelvis to the spine gets stretched out and Prolotherapy is wonderful for things like that because it regrows the tissue, tightens those bones together like they are suppose to be. Because ligaments attach bones to bones, and with the MedX medical equipment that we have that helps strengthens the muscles around the area it is a very winning combination with the chiropractics for alignment and I think you can have very good success with that.

Dr. Gene: What is the (most common) pains that come through your door?

Dr. Darrow: Well I think 80% of people at some point in their life have back pain and 1/3rd of the American population is in chronic pain. But we see everything, we see headaches, all the way down to toe pain, so Prolotherapy is good for most types of musculo-skeletal pain.

Dr. Gene: You know with the traditional medicine using the MRI or any type of soft tissue x-ray. In your opinion is there a down side risk to using these techniques as the basis of surgery?

Dr. Darrow: The first thing I do when a patient walks in the door is to work very hard at taking away their diagnosis, because the people that come in who have seen many doctors, who have many diagnosis, they are branded, it is like the have a scarlet letter on their chest. It is a shame that they constantly walk around and constantly think there is something wrong with them when there is not in many cases and the things that leads doctors to make these diagnosis is MRIs, CT Scans, or X-Rays, because they will see something that doesn't look right, then they will diagnosis it and the person is stuck with it. It isn't right because many of the things we see on the scans or the MRIs are not the cause of the pain, or the pain generators. Yes people have these things, but more times than not they have no pain, so we do have to be very careful with what we diagnosis and what is causing their pain. 

Dr. Gene: Quickly what is Prolotherapy

Dr. Darrow: Prolotherapy is a simple injection of dextrose and a local anesthetic, like those used in dentistry work.

What the dextrose does is start a very small inflammatory response in the body. Inflammation kicks up the immune system, the immune system brings up fibroblasts which are small cells that produce collagen. Wherever we put that small needle, we will be stimulating collagen growth (Studies have shown ligaments actually get 50% thicker and their strength becomes 200-400% stronger.) Typically a person needs to get injected two to four times to show improvement, and if it is a really bad injury, we may have to inject up to eight times over a period of a couple of months as it does take collagen a couple of months to grow.

CALLER: I have baseball injury and I play golf at least once a week, and once maybe twice a year I will aggravate this old back injury, a bulging disc. Anything that you can recommend?

Dr. Darrow: What happened with the baseball how long ago was that?

CALLER: 8-9 years ago.

Dr. Darrow: And was that the same area of your back that hurt when you play golf?

CALLER: Yes, lower right, same injury

Dr. Darrow: At some point you probably sprained the iliolumbar ligament. I am a little bit guessing here because I can't touch you, but if you are sore, if you can press you thumb right above your pelvis and that is the sore area, that is where the iliolumbar ligament is and that is what attaches the pelvis to the spine and for people, especially golfers where they make a big turn and swinging their club at like 100 miles an hour and then torquing their body's, it stretches their ligaments way out, it is like a rubber band that has been stretched too far and it doesn't come back to its original size until we do Prolotherapy and it brings it back into alignment. DO you have any leg pain with your back pain?

Caller: No 

Dr. Darrow: I am pretty sure if that we palpitated the area for you it would be pretty sore and Prolotherapy would help heal that right up. 

DR. Gene: Why don't some injuries heal?

Dr. Darrow: I mentioned before, the areas that don't heal typically don't have a very good blood supply so they don't have a chance to have the nutrients that they need to heal or to have the cells, the chondroblasts or the fibroblasts come to the area through the blood system to help grow more tissues o what happens is, most injuries are what we call strains or sprains where the area is stretched out. What happens is that they never grow back on their own, so what we are left with is a constant pain generator until we can do Prolotherapy to rejuvenate it and grow more tissue there and bring it back to its pre-injury state.

EMAIL: Can I test myself to see if Prolotherapy would help?

Dr. Darrow: There is a yes and a no to that. If there is an area that you can press on that is sore, that means that there is a strong chance that Prolotherapy will work to fix that. For example most of our weight-lifters patients have pain in the front of the shoulder and that is because they are doing those bench presses with all that weight which stretches that part of the shoulder out, and when they touch it, is sore. That is a good indication that Prolotherapy will work. But inside the joints where you cannot put a finger, people can have pain. Let's says again with the shoulder, if they lift their arm up in the air and stretch it backwards, that usually means that the tendon inside, the superspinatus tendon or the bursa, a little fluid filled sac that protects the bones and the tendons from each other is inflamed, and if they do a test like that sometimes, or with movement of the arms where the shoulder hurts, it is very common that Prolotherapy will help those areas. And we have had people with rotator cuff tears where they could not even move their arm in a full range of motion without pain, we have had people with glenoid tears, people with adhesive capsulitis where the Prolotherapy gave them back their sports life. 

Email: I have been to chiropractors for whiplash can Prolotherapy help?

Dr. Darrow: For Prolotherapy it is phenomenal. Because from whiplash, you not only end up with neck pain, but you can also get pain that spreads to the back and ends up in a lot of different parts of the body, it doesn't make sense but that is they way it works. I think that once one part of the spine is out of alignment, or if the ligaments become weakened through a hyperextension or flexion Prolotherapy would definitely help out. 

Neck Pain and Whiplash Links