Solutions Integrated Medicine Blog

     A frozen shoulder makes simple tasks like putting on a shirt or washing your hair painful and eventually impossible. Also called Adhesive Capsulitis, this condition is caused by adhesions and scar tissue that develop on the shoulder joint capsule. It mostly occurs in people who’ve kept their arm mobilized for a long time or have diabetes, and the effects eventually become debilitating. About 10% of people with rotator cuff disorders develop frozen shoulder. Fortunately if caught early enough, the primary treatment for this condition is therapy. The downside is the down time; frozen shoulders can take 6-9 months and sometimes several years to recover from (1). 

     Sometimes patients don’t fair well after a joint replacement because their legs have become uneven. If the doctors fail to measure the lengths of the legs correctly prior to the procedure, a discrepancy in leg length is often the result. The body can compensate for a small amount, but when leg length discrepancy becomes too large, it creates imbalances in other joints and wreaks havoc. For example, a short leg tips the pelvis and curves the spine, creating a scoliosis, causing disc problems, pinched nerves and even accelerate degeneration of other joints. Unfortunately, most orthopedic surgery is very difficult to change after the fact, so leg deficiencies created by joint replacement can cause problems patients may have to dealt with forever. 

     Some people think going to a chiropractor after an accident is just another option for care… oh how they could be more wrong! There are many car accident victims that end up with chronic pain years later because their doctor never recommended a chiropractor. The fact is if you have neck or back pain after a car wreck and you don’t go to the chiropractor, you could suffer with spine problems for the rest of your life! Depending on the severity of the initial injury, permanent degenerative damage to your spinal ligaments begins very soon after a car accident - if you don’t receive the proper treatment in time. 

     One of the most common complaints from knee pain sufferers is pain over the medial aspect of the joint. When it hurts on the inside of your knee, it can be difficult to sleep on your side without a cushion between your legs. Medial knee pain can be from an injury, but is more often the result of degenerative arthritis when chronic. If you suffer with bilateral pain in this area regularly, a current x-ray is a good measure to check up on the health of your joint spaces. Sometimes joint degeneration can be sneaky; only producing symptoms (like medial knee pain) in the last stages. 

     Ever had a cortisone injection that didn’t help with your joint pain? This is because it’s commonly over-prescribed and often prescribed for the wrong reason. Cortisone is actually an anti-inflammatory (not primarily a pain medicine) and the most common injection given for joint pain. Yet the most common reason for chronic joint pain is Osteoarthritis, a degenerative type of arthritis. In this condition, swelling and inflammation are often not the main reasons for pain… then why is the most popular treatment an anti-inflammatory? 

     If you want to prolong your joints, you have to focus on the ligaments. Ligaments are a type of connective tissue; they connect your bones together. Their purpose is to support the joints during movement, and also act as cushions between the bones. When a ligament becomes damaged from injury or degeneration, the joint it’s supporting becomes unstable and painful. When the ligaments fail, the joint is doomed. If you can keep your ligaments alive and healthy longer, your joints will last longer. Fortunately there’s new science helping patients rebuild damaged connective tissue – and it’s turning back the clock on osteoarthritis and many chronic ligament disorders. Read more here….

Regenerative medicine can be quite effective for helping patients in pain and facing surgery from degenerative damage in their joints. As it often takes years for joints to deteriorate enough before they fail, the age range who needs this the most are retired, on fixed incomes and can rarely afford the costs of regenerative treatments. Fortunately, now Medicare is starting to cover a program called Interfyl for qualified patients. 

     Often occurring from car accidents, spinal ligament instability is one of the most common reasons for chronic neck/back pain lasting for years after the wreck. This condition is often overlooked or misdiagnosed as it does not show up on regular diagnostic imaging. MRI, CT and regular x-ray fail to show it. When supportive ligaments are damaged in the spine, they can cause serious, ongoing pain and the worst cases can even be a criteria for spinal surgery. While most doctors miss this condition, we have great success! 

     Advanced osteoarthritis causes joints to degenerate and lose their cartilage resulting in instability and reduced space. In the knee joints, this causes extreme pain, weakness and eventually may end in joint replacement if the space gets thin enough. A common treatment for this is an injection of hyaluronic acid and is an effort to temporarily improve space and lubricate the joint. This is called viscosupplementation and helps many patients with pain relief and can even delay surgery, but often involves 3-5 injections. 

     Even though it’s been practiced for numerous years now, regenerative medicine is considered a new(er) branch of medicine. While treating joint problems with allografts and regenerative tissue products have been deemed safe and effective by the FDA, the science has not been around long enough for standard treatment protocols to have been established. Just as there are new products constantly coming out that are better and more advanced than the last, the same goes for the understanding and application of treatment. At Solutions, we have also been through a progression of understanding of just how these products work and what works best.