Dr. Chad Edwards | Popping Painkillers vs. Prolotherapy

you know if you were to sprain your ankle you're gonna undergo a normal reaction to that ankle sprain a lot of people with low back pain will get better on their own in six weeks you sprained your ankle a lot of times it get better it gets better on its own within six weeks because ligaments and tendons do not have a good blood supply there's only a certain amount of healing that they can do and with Prolotherapy we're restating that a normal inflammatory response trying to achieve the goal of full function without pain my next guest is a board-certified family medicine physician he's the founder of revolution their revolution health and wellness which focuses on functional medicine geared towards optimizing the health of their patients dr. Chad Edwards thanks for coming on man oh man thanks for having me I'm excited to be here it's gonna be a fun one I was looking over your site and there's some topics we've never uncharted territory on the show so I'm excited to get into some IV therapy and Prolotherapy and skincare routines but before we get into that I'm curious how you got into being the guy into all that stuff what was your journey like yeah so you know I was I was an exercise physiology major in college I worked with a lot of soldiers I was an enlisted guy in the army and then a you know into medical school went did my residency at Fort Bragg North Carolina and had kind of a traditional training in that regard where I got out of residency and went to 5th Special Forces Group and when I was there one of my commanders who worked another special operations unit he came to me and said hey I need I need Prolotherapy I was like well I have no idea what that is and of course when your commander comes and says I need something in your job is to go find it so I started looking in the Prolotherapy and actually my PA at the time started looking into it we found a guy in Nashville that that did Prolotherapy and he fixed my commanders elbow and he came up and did an an in-service exam and was talking about what Prolotherapy is what it does how it works and this guy just turned my entire world on its head he said you know I was an athletic trainer in college I was you know a medic and you know as an enlisted guy and I had t-shirts that said just is't and this guy said whatever you do don't ice you know after an injury and certainly don't use anti-inflammatories and it just turned everything upside down and I was like this guy's either crazy or brilliant and it took me six months but I figured out he's on to something and I was able to fix things that I hadn't been able to address before in any other way previously don't ice it use Prolotherapy or what did he say don't ice it and no we go to anti-inflammatories like motrin a person those kinds of things okay and so you started seeing this alternative method of reducing inflammation or our joint pains or back issues and you started going down that path and that's exactly and you know some of these some of the issues that I had dealt with in the past you know plantar fasciitis shin splints there's a lot of things that you know just we didn't have good results in it you know I'd send him physical therapy and they make it a little bit better it may help a little bit but there was a lot of patients that it just didn't it was very frustrating and when I saw Robin the Gatorade cup in two thus influenced exactly exactly so you know with brother therapy I was able to turn that around in a way that I hadn't been able to previously in it it was shocking huh okay and so now before we start getting into that you're doing a functional medicine practice working with the everyday person so describe the everyday person who's coming in and that you're working with probably the most common from a functional medicine perspective probably the most common patient that I see is a female I will say 30 to 45 50 55 years old that comes in says I feel bad I'm tired I'm fatigued I have no sex drive I've been to you know three different doctors nobody can figure out what's going on and there's something wrong I'm not crazy I'm not depressed so figure that out and that's probably our most typical functional medicine patient then we get males that need testosterone replacement those kinds of things that would be the typical patient from a Prolotherapy perspective it can be it can run the gamut they may be athletes they may be older patients with chronic pain that there there is no typical in regards to that I had a teacher in college professor and he was talking about this one student who gay up and gave a public speak or speech and he was on the Wasel which stood for like the Washington State Board Association or something ridiculous but no one knew what it meant cause he never defined it so every time he said Wasel it got funnier and funnier and funnier yeah so I don't want Prolotherapy to be that thing well I don't know anything about it it was certainly sound like the Wasel to me yeah can you kind of explain to me what Prolotherapy is all about absolutely in Prolotherapy the term was coined by dr. George Hackett in the 1950s when he wrote his book on Prolotherapy so this has been around for a long time and it stands for proliferative therapy so basically we know that layman's and tendons are made of collagen you know it's like a steel cable that holds two things together and the the collagen is like the strands of the the it's the little strands in that steel cable so when you have damaged one of these ligaments and tendons the Prolotherapy proliferate snoo new collagen formation so we can actually restore the ligaments and tendons to their normal healthy structure and function okay um sorry what does Prolotherapy do one more time' i blanked when you were talking about so basically what you're doing with Prolotherapy is you're stimulating your body to heal itself that's it okay and it does that through inflammation you know we all think that inflammation is bad but inflammation in the acute phase is actually how your body's it's how it heals that is the mechanism by which we heal without inflammation you don't heal that's why you shouldn't take anti-inflammatories after an acute injury so very interesting paradigm shift and when we treat these musculoskeletal conditions so we're just stimulating your body to heal itself and how do you stimulate how do you like I come in to use insulin so what do we do yeah so first we're gonna do an evaluation we're gonna try and identify the areas that are causing problems and I you usually it's by palpation I'm just pushing and poking when you know ligaments and tendons are very sensitive they've got a lot of nerve fibers in them when they're damaged it irritates the nerves and that sends the signal of the brain causes pain causes a whole host of potential symptoms pain to one of them it's the guys at the shoulder injuries can't bench press and it hurts exactly where the pitchers thrown the ball over and over again right exactly we see a lot of a lot of shoulder injuries in fact it's our number one area that do and our success rate is well in excess of 98 percent it's amazing Prolotherapy I'm coming to you with shin splints how would you go about fixing that you mentioned addressing the problem seeing what's going on and then what sure so we're gonna do an evaluation physical exam I'm gonna push on those things the nerves that live within ligaments and tendons are very sensitive and when the ligaments and tendons are damaged causes pain causes and sometimes it feels weak sometimes you may feel like a kind of a numbness or a weird feeling like that but a lot of times it's pain so when I push on those things and they'll be sensitive so that helps me identify the areas that we need to treat and then we perform the Prolotherapy procedure which are injections and I use a dextrose Prolotherapy standard dexterous Prolotherapy solution very very very safe solution to use in fact you almost can't as long as you understand how to do the injections you really can't screw it up it's very very safe and so we'll inject all of these areas there's a little bit of lidocaine in the solution so the lidocaine helps numb those areas up and when they're numb and they don't the patient doesn't have pain anymore I know we've got in the right area so I haven't get up and walk around if that looks good then we've got in the right area and then we're gonna follow them and see how they do okay so when someone hears injection they're picturing like a syringe this big filled with all sorts of chemicals what's in the actual mixture of the the Prolotherapy yeah very very basic solution use fifty fifteen one five fifteen percent dextrose which is sugar sugar water sterile water and lidocaine lidocaine obviously is the anesthetic that helps you understand what areas that I need to get and if I've gotten the right areas and and completely inadequately treated the area the dextrose because of the concentration that we are using in this injection it causes a fluid shift so the fluids will shift out of the cells and it causes what we call cremation those those cells in those tissues we'll shrink and that shrinking stimulates the inflammatory process hmm okay what was the like liposome what was a solution in the actual pillow therapy lidocaine lidocaine okay and what does that made up of is that that's just the the local anesthetic so if you were you know if you're gonna get stitches yeah the lidocaine numbs up the area so you can get your stitches okay okay got it and so pro therapy is very safe ninety-eight percent success rate you mentioned that you shouldn't ice it and you should actually embrace inflammation acute inflammation you can talk a little bit more about that that was interesting yeah sure so you know if you were to sprain your ankle you're gonna undergo a normal reaction to that ankle sprain there's going to be in the first 72 hours or so you're gonna have the inflammatory phase and in part of your immune system is gonna migrate into this area and specifically what we're looking at with this with with the healing in regards to collagen is a cell called a fibroblast fibroblasts create collagen that's part of what they do so these cells will migrate into the tissues will have a whole host of inflammatory chemicals come in that's where we see that the redness and the swelling and all of those things that go along with you know that ankle pain and the swelling that we see with with a an ankle sprain and so that that initial phase is that first 72 hours after an injury then we have a the second phase is called the proliferative phase and that's where you're actually making new collagen you're trying to strengthen these tissues and that occurs over about a six-week period after the injury and then the last phase is the the remodeling phase and where the collagen you know these fibroblasts they don't it's not like they're laying down railroad tracks where they take a piece of collagen and attach it and it's this linear fashion they're just basically just kind of puking up collagen so they just kind of spit it out and then over that 18-month period we're we're integrating that into the tissues and we're orienting them in the in the structure that they need to be so that we get the maximum strength so the fiber class giving out the collagen do they do that with just one session or is this you have to continue doing yeah so they they'll do that after a normal injury that's why you know that six week mark that helps explain why a lot of people with low back pain will get better on their own in six weeks you sprained your ankle a lot of times it get better it gets better on its own within six weeks yeah that that's an interesting mark for you know healing on our own and with Prolotherapy so anytime there's an injury anything that stimulates that inflammatory response you're going to have those fibroblasts migrate into the area and they're going to begin to produce collagen because ligaments and tendons do not have a good blood supply there's only a certain amount of healing that they can do sometimes it's sufficient and and the pain will go away you'll return to normal function but a lot of times we'll get of course I'm a little bit biased because I see patients that that they didn't get better by traditional methods and so we'll have continued and can be long-term pain and with Prolotherapy we're restating that a normal inflammatory response trying to achieve the goal of full function without pain have you seen back pain go away because I know the l4 l5 is like the most common side of back pain you know it's one of the biggest complaints in the medical field is lower back pain what have you seen Prolotherapy do for people who are suffering from back pain well throughout throughout history back into the 1950s and dr. Hackett started in the 1930s with his case series but since that time we've got a greater than eighty-five percent success rate in treating musculoskeletal pain and problems so and that includes low back pain and we have seen tremendous results with many many cases of low back pain in fact I in the last since I've been in Prolotherapy he started in 2008 I have seen one case only one case of true sciatica where there was actually a nerve root impingement the disc was herniated pushing on the nerve root causing pain going down the leg time after time after time patients will come in and they'll say I've got pain going down my leg and they'll think that's a herniated disc pushing on the nerve my experience most of the time it's a ligament or tendon causing radiating pain going down the leg and the one of the beautiful things about Prolotherapy is that I can identify exactly where the damaged structures are because of the solutions that we use and the nature in which we do these injections I would argue it's much much much better than an MRI my dad got he thought he had the sciatic nerve and so he went in for a few was the hydro cortisone injections and then I don't know if they fused it together to get rid of the back pain but it was to the point you know he's a swimmer five times a week very competitive and he couldn't do it anymore it just was too painful he'd walk around you know like holding his back and then he got I think the surgery and it was all better are you so the Prolotherapy how is it different than like the hydro cortisone injections it's it's as different as hydrocortisone yeah as day is tonight it's the complete opposite into the spectrum hydrocortisone you know any of the steroids or any of the the glucocorticoids are anti-inflammatory we're trying to reduce inflammation in the hopes that we're going to minimize their symptoms the problem is is those those those medications are necrotic to the tissue they destroy the tissue when we know this it's in every Northup edicts textbook we know that those those solutions are damaging to the tissue it's why you can only have so many of them so often because like two or three or something exactly so and we can't inject them you know if you've got an Achilles tendon problem we do not inject steroids into the Achilles tendon because you can actually destroy or rupture that tendon after having a corticosteroid injections so those are reducing inflammation and causing long-term destruction of the tissues whereas Prolotherapy is causing inflammation enhancing the tissues in fact they've done animal studies where they did Prolotherapy injections dextrose Prolotherapy injections and the the the tendon when they they euthanize the animal at the end of the study and they evaluated the tendon and it was 40% thicker than the control group and it was 50 stronger than the control group so we're making the tendons like Bionic tendons we're making them thicker and stronger than they were before the injury why aren't more people talking about this is it starting to come around because the first time I've heard of it and I did an exercise science undergrad so you know of course I know everything right but you know we have people on the show all the time and it's the first time I'm hearing about it is it is it still pretty underground yeah I would say that it is and there's a couple of reasons why it is the first one is most of my colleagues will evaluate does something work or not based on the scientific evidence so what's the study proving that it works and unfortunately many of them will not use an intervention unless there's a study proving that it works my argument from a functional medicine perspective across the board is I don't necessarily need a study to prove it works I need I need to make sure that I'm not causing harm that's my biggest issue don't do any harm that's the first dictum of medicine so as long as I'm not doing harm and there is potential benefit then that's a therapy that would consider so there's you know so how do you get scientific studies well somebody has they're expensive to do you have to have funding the solutions are very very simple and there's no money to be made in these solutions so no one is from a super pharmaceutical perspective is going to do a study on dextrose Prolotherapy so there aren't many studies proving that it works in an environment where you have to have evidence-based medicine to convince people that this works there's just not enough of that now the second piece so the first one is a lack of good scientific data the second piece is the studies that are out there are very conflicted and there's a if I can take a step back and I'll tell the story about when I first started doing Prolotherapy I saw tremendous benefit and I was an evidence-based medicine guy in fact when I was in residency I was the resident in charge of evidence-based medicine that was kind of how I thought and and now that was a big reason why I shifted into functional medicine when I saw probably therapy so I did the injections on these on people and they were getting better left and right I mean almost 100% of the time I was like this is amazing nothing that I do in medicine is this effective so I started looking into the research and I said if I'm gonna do stuff like this then I better know what the research says and be able to you know defend my position and things like that so the first thing I looked at was the Cochrane Collaboration and if your listeners are unfamiliar with the Cochrane Collaboration they're a group that evaluates the scientific evidence and then they look at the quality of the studies and what kind of studies are out there and then they'll make a recommendation this works or it doesn't kind of like skeptics and they're going through everything and seeing if it's yeah okay yeah exactly so they they looked at five studies on Prolotherapy and their conclusion was that it didn't work so I've got a problem I see that it works because my patients got better like almost all of them and now I have a study that shows that it doesn't work this doesn't match we've got a real problem here so I pulled all five of the studies that the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed and I started reading the actual study that they looked at the largest study was done by a physician out of Australia named Yelland and I think this will underscore the point of why they came to their conclusion the study had I think was a hundred and ten patients and they had two groups it was a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind study which would be the gold standard from an evidence based medicine perspective and they so the neither of the physicians nor the patients knew were they getting saline injections or were they getting Dexter's Prolotherapy injections so two different groups one got one got saline injections one got dextrous Prolotherapy injections and at the end of the study they they said that there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups so from their perspective this was no better than quote placebo so it doesn't work that was their conclusion now there's a couple of problems with that the first one is that you've heard of dry needling no okay very common in physical therapy dry needling is where you take a needle and you injected the tissue and there are studies validating the effectiveness of dry needling yeah Sasebo sugarpill exactly so and now with with dry needling there is a physiologic effect it's not a placebo so we know that there's an effect with that so if we are doing an injection we're sticking a needle into the tissues and we're injecting saline we're thinking that that's a placebo the problem is is we know just sticking a needle into the tissue causes a change and there's an impact with with that patient there is an outcome with that patient so then when you inject any solution you can cause an inflammatory response so in effect we're evaluating two different therapies okay cuz even the Saline would cause the inflammation which could cause a similar effect as the Prolotherapy that's correct since that's the mechanism for the healing exactly now at the end of the study the thing that really drove this home for me was the average duration of pain of patients enrolled in the study was 14 years that had 14 years of pain on average at the end of the study both patients were very happy both groups were very happy with their results so both patients got better and a better conclusion instead of saying Prolotherapy doesn't work a better conclusion is saline is as effective as Prolotherapy because these patients got better so that that's one of the many reasons why you know that study does not disprove Prolotherapy and i would argue that it's it is showing the additional benefit and there there were a lot of other things when you look at the procedure they limited the procedure to 10 milliliters of solution I might use a hundred in a low back so it's it's a very different procedure than what I do but regardless they got better yeah yeah that's interesting too cuz the dry needle is if that stimulates somewhat of an effect versus saline it's two different things like you were saying I I think the number one thing people would be skeptical about at home is that is it safe thing and you know when they hear needles and injections they mediately go to like Jason Bourne and a chair get injected with like truth serum or something so the actual the actual mixtures is relatively safe and used on a everyday basis right it's just dextrose the lidocaine and then was it water yep what yeah and you know to go to your point about you know is it safe the former Surgeon General of the United States under President Reagan so we're talking in the 80s his name was C everett Koop and he was actually a print a an advocate for Prolotherapy in his statement was the nice thing about Prolotherapy if properly done is that cannot do any harm so the whole risk of the procedure itself is related to the needle and the injections the needles that we use are very thin so i use a the biggest needle that I use as a 22 gauge in diameter now which is a relatively small needle and I'll use a 25 gauge needle for a lot of things and I'll even go as small as a 30 gauge for some other so 30 gauge needle is like a hair I mean it is a little bitty needle so most of the time it's fairly well tolerated I do offer sedation or medications to kind of you know calm patients down I would say 98 to 99 percent of my patients don't need anything and they it's free medication a good time only giving me Prolotherapy you know and obviously you know we want our patients to you know to have a good experience when they come to see us but our ultimate goal is that they get better and I'm I'm balancing you know when you when you take a medication like valium or versed or fentanyl or one of these kinds of medications it's you're gonna be knocked out for a few hours I mean you may be awake but you're not you're not productive a lot of my patients will come in and get probably therapy in the morning and then go right to work so there's no downtime with this many of my athletes are working out the next day not at their highest level but I want that movement I want motion and because that that helps with the search elation which ultimately helps with the healing so I don't generally give medications although we can I've got some patients that need it and we can do that and I forget was it an ongoing treatment or is it just a one and done kind of thing it it's all really guided by the patient now on average the average patient needs between three and six rounds of the Prolotherapy procedure in order to achieve that goal of full function without pain it's a sprint in the six weeks its I really four weeks because when you look at the way that collagen is produced we want to maximize that collagen production so I re-evaluated and four weeks and then we'll repeat the procedure at that time and the average patient three to four weeks so we're looking at three to six I'm in it which I'm sorry three to six procedures so we're looking on average three to six months and they're they're back to their normal baseline without pain where would you recommend people go to find like a Prolotherapy in their area if they have back pain or shin splints or anything like that yeah and that's a really good question because there is no quote certification for Prolotherapy any physician can hang up a shingle outside their clinic and say I do Prolotherapy and I I've seen some really talented perla therapists and I've seen some really really shady proto therapists do it can you do it yourself probably a learning curve not the safest thing sticking 30 gauge needles into you by yourself yeah exactly so the to answer your question and I strongly recommend the patients do something like this there's a an organization called the Hackett hem wall foundation and it's hack at hem wall org if you want to put that in the show notes or you know whatever you can hem wall org and go to the list of Provo therapists the Hackett hem wall foundation has probably the most rigorous training requirements of any organization out there you have to spend a significant amount of time one-on-one with a with a trained Pro therapist in order to be on the list of recommended recommended Prolotherapy so I'm the only one in Oklahoma and happily on it exactly don't you get certified milk Lahoma but it I think that's probably the best place to start because you just don't know another organization would be the American Osteopathic Association no no no American orthopedic Association the AOA and they also do a lot of training on Prolotherapy and a lot of the people in the hack at home wall foundation are also in the I'm sorry it's AOM American Academy of Orthopaedic Medicine there we go yeah it sounds pretty safe just hearing it for the first time I mean just that mixture alone I mean like aspirins probably got more chemicals in it or even some of the things that are legal in like a drugstore you go to over-the-counter medicines and there's or supplements you know there's you can order bioidenticals online and just start dosing yourself DIY but what all of a sudden when you break out like needles people freak out and throw their hands in the air even though it might be less dangerous and some of the stuff that comes in like a pill form sure yeah I mean it this it's incredibly safe the last serious side effects that we saw were literally in 1956 so you know a long time ago it's very very safe I've done thousands of procedures and I've never seen a single complication even a mild complication I just we just don't see them we're very careful with how we do the procedure and you know we make sure we get good follow-up and patients are taken care of in that acute phase and we get incredible results have you heard of stem cell therapy absolutely okay that's that and is that similar different it's it's very similar but so I would I would argue that there's three basically phases so you got Prolotherapy you know it's a you know we're injecting these solutions that we've talked about there's also PRP or platelet-rich plasma therapy and so you have you heard of PRP no okay so you know names like Kobe Bryant and there's been several there was sorry is that were they spin it in a centrifuge and then they inject it back in yeah that's exactly right so basically and the concept is the exact same as Prolotherapy we're just using the the the growth factors that are derived from platelets to stimulate that inflammation and it's very effective it's a little bit more expensive but will draw the patient's blood spin it down the centrifuge and will draw out just that platelet-rich plasma portion so you know very effective it's a little more potent than probable therapy but it costs a little bit more an average patient who needs between two and four rounds so PRP is also a great way to go okay then the last step that I would consider would be stem-cell and you know there are several different ways that you can harvest stem cell you can use adipose tissue or the fat tissue and go in and get the stem cells from there you can do a bone marrow aspirate or what we call it BMAC and you can get stem cells from that those are autologous meaning they come from the patient and then you can also use a donor stem cell and the one that I use is out of the tissue bank from the University of Miami and they're using amniotic stem cell lower cost very effective very good so I give the patient the option and let them choose but so we do stem cell as well and I usually guide patients to do stem cell if we're having knee or hip problems inside the joint and we're trying to regenerate cartilage you know their bone on bone you know they've got a lot of knee pain and they're just not responding and I would look at stem cell for that but I almost always do it in conjunction with PRP and or stem or a Prolotherapy it's kind of a good break down it's like beginning middle and last resort yeah exactly and probably cost - I mean Prolotherapy yeah probably cheaper yeah it's much cheaper I mean you're looking at it depend on the area i we in our clinic we charge by the area but because it's based on complexity how much solution we're using safety all those things so anywhere from you know 150 dollars to five hundred dollars depending on the region oh yeah it's not bad enough right and that that is per treatment so you know you three to six rounds I mean you're you're talking you know for like low back $1500 now stem cell I incorporate PRP the platelet-rich plasma therapy and I use a higher volume and so it on the on the amniotic and that you're looking at a little less than 3000 for that and that's you know for a one-time deal but stem cell is you do one procedure and that's it I mean just seeing my dad walk around with that pain when I was growing up just like clenching his back and just couldn't do anything but it seems like a investment to get rid of that that's what he was saying you see he tried acupuncture he tried anti-inflammatories tried medications he tried icing it he tried elevating it different kinds of beds yeah so okay so Prolotherapy who would benefit from this what are some of the most common conditions for the people out there we mentioned shin splints back pain are there any others yeah pretty much everywhere from the base of the skull down I can inject so and it runs the spectrum so I've done Prolotherapy for migraines because there's often a musculoskeletal component to that neck pain car accident where they had whiplash I've had shoulder is the number one area that we do see a lot of CrossFit athletes and whether or not they're doing their their techniques correct or incorrect and we've got some very talented CrossFit athletes and we've resolved their shoulder issues and our our success rate with shoulders like I said earlier is about 98% I mean it's really effective we've done wrists things like carpal tunnel syndrome lots of lateral and medial epicondylitis or tennis elbow and golfer's elbow lots of knees hips ankles in fact I just I was a little late getting on the podcast because I was actually doing an ankle and it was a very atypical ankle he didn't one kind of your normal sprained ankle it was just a typical and so you just have to work through them figure out where are they hurting and go for the area that's probably causing their pain so pretty much anywhere from here down okay fascinating stuff and then so if someone's experiencing let's say they just got some back pain like me on the drive I don't want to Yellowstone last week 16 hours from Seattle to Yellowstone and my back was just screaming by the end of it I was I couldn't drive I was hunched over and everything and my first go-to was to ice it and take some ibuprofen or something like that maybe do some foam rolling what would you recommend to the to me in that situation so I would everything that you did except for the the ibuprofen I remember that ibuprofen they've done again animal studies where they cut halfway through the tendon and gave different animals I think it was a rat study that gave different anti-inflammatories to a series of these animals and at the end of the study the groups that got anti-inflammatories didn't heal the group they left alone healed very well so I would argue based on those animal studies and what we see clinically that by taking anti-inflammatories you're inhibiting the healing process they help in the short-term but they don't help heal those tissues but I think foam rolling stretching massage chiropractic you know all of those kinds of things I think are a great way to go and remember that a lot of things will heal on their own within six weeks so if this is a recurrent or repetitive issue you know you're not getting the benefit and I would consider probably okay at that point but there any supplements like fish oil I know that one gets a big like the lubricating of joints for omega-3 since that's that you've seen work I you know working for the joints no not not specifically not fish oil now I'm a big advocate for fish oil because of a multitude of issues it is relatively anti-inflammatory it's not an anti-inflammatory like motrin so I don't recommend that my patients stop the the their fish oil like I would recommend they stop motrin because there's a lot of benefit to that it's balancing inflammation is probably a better way of saying it some of the natural anti-inflammatories like turmeric curcumin those kinds of things may not be a bad idea boswellia may not be a bad idea there's some some question about things like MSM glucosamine chondroitin you know they may be of benefit is MSM the horse cream that's the methyl I think jewel Salama was talking to me on the show he buys like it's not a tub of anti inflammatory horse cream or something made for horses and it was Emma them or something like that I don't know anyway sorry to get you but so there's some things again going back to that what's the risk what's the potential benefit so what they may not be proven to work but if we're not hurting somebody then go for it maybe maybe it helps them and maybe it's just a placebo maybe just think it helps but who cares yeah better than who cares yeah cuz the person at home might be a little confused here we are in the paleo community whole food community talking about anti-inflammatory anti-inflammatory this you can't get inflammation cars heart disease and then in very specific areas with Prolotherapy inflammation is beneficial and that's what you want inflammation in specific areas because it's part of the healing process right and in that acute phase when it goes you know beyond six weeks and you've got chronic repetitive yeah inflammation that's a problem okay without question okay well cool a couple more questions for a chat before I let you go this is a fun one flew by these are closing closing bits here yeah the first one is looking back on 2016 2015 what's been the biggest lesson you've learned oh goodness well the first one I it's almost really more of a life lesson than anything else but never ever quit never ever quit long story on you know I won't go into the details of this but just you know my clinic we faced a number of of issues and I had some staff turnover and things like that and you know you just nose to the grindstone just keep working and you know that I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan and I was watching one of his videos the other day in Financial Peace University and he was talking about this this billionaire that read a book to his grandkids and the book was The Tortoise and the hare and he says every time I win it or every time I read it The Tortoise wins every time so you know it's it's keeping you know hold true to what your what your goals are and just stick your nose to the grindstone that's probably the biggest thing were you looking for specifically a medically no that's perfect man that I'd say nine times out of ten on the show that's the way they go it's out of the medical zone well what what sort of books or resources do you use recommend what are your go-to favorite things oh gosh there's a list right now I'm currently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma great book it goes into you know just the history of the industrialization of our food so that one I love of course you can't ever go wrong with the Paleo solution by Rob Wolfe love that one I do a lot with Wheat Belly there's a book by a Horowitz why can't I get better and it's like the story of Lyme and chronic disease that one is just a wealth of physiology and why do patients get screwed up so that's a really good book so medically those are those are the probably the big ones okay great and the last one what have you changed your mind on in the past year oh goodness well I recently started working in the emergency room again and so you know I like to keep my hat in that game as well there's just a lot of benefit to you know you want to keep the you know keep a nice razor's edge on on all of my medical skills and functional medicine is certainly one of them but it's very different than you know a traditional acute care medicine so the number one thing probably that I've changed my mind on is there are a lot of patients that come into the emergency room that they may not have they may not have health insurance they may not have access to healthcare and I used to think you know go look it up on the internet and they just come in for some of the dumbest things I've been being honest and they'll just come in for some things that you're like this is not an emergency and I I used to get irritated with them and now I just view it as my job is to take care of that patient and the best way that I can they aren't as educated on this as I am so you know what I'm getting paid to take care of them let's do the absolute best job that we can and and just treat them as I would want to be treated regard so you know of their background so used to you know get irritated with them now you know let's just do the best we can to take care of it it's a good one because I think being in the health community for a decade now and getting educated on symptoms and how to and nutrition and everything I'm not perfect I don't stuff so much to learn so I love doing the show but anyway when you don't have that information health seems kind of daunting and scary and when you get a headache you might freak out and think you have something more serious like cancer and so you go to WebMD and type in your symptoms and then it tells you you're pregnant that's impossible and so you can get you can go down that spiral for simple things and I think it's normal for people when they're starting out or maybe they're not as educated as people listening to this call because a lot of people are smart on this to really like put out the information and just be gentle and educate people and it's it's a learning curve with health just like anything yeah there's no question and so often I see my colleagues getting bogged down in illness and disease and if we would do a whole paradigm shift across quote health care which isn't as you and I both know is not health care it's sick care if we would shift toward taking care of someone's health health and illness are mutually exclusive you can't have both of them you know you if you're if you're sick you can't be healthy if you're healthy you're not sick so focus on health you won't have to worry about illness and disease as much dr. Chad Edwards my man our time has come to a close revolution health and wellness is that the best website please to find you at yeah that's for our clinic I've got a podcast at against the grain podcast calm so that is that on iTunes as well it is okay against the grain podcast is that with dr.

Peter Osborne no Oh catch me okay sure good anyway another story for another time all good thanks for coming on man I really appreciate that's dr. Chad Edwards everyone fascinating stuff with the Prolotherapy things we've never talked about on the show before IV replacement therapy as well so I'm sure you can you can google that and find clinics in your area if you're interested in that of course no medical advice is being solicited over the Internet we don't play doctor over the Internet so always check with your health care professional before taking on anything we just talked about we've been doing the show now for three years thank you so much for supporting it and you know the best way to support the show is to go over to iTunes leave a rating and a review takes three minutes and helps us out a lot so this week's on air review get your name read on air is from bass player babe she says great discussion of topics Clark keeps conversation lively and easy to understand thank you so much bass player babe really means a lot you took the time to rate and review the show and we don't currently have any lined up so if you want to be first in line to get your name on the air your review read head on over there again it's it takes three minutes and it helps us out a lot be sure you go to paler XCOM get the show notes get the archives all our previous episodes over there my best journal com again that's my course I'm putting together on how you can use journaling to improve the quality of your life self growth and something so simple so cheap and it it's really just on how you use it so that's the course I put together all right that's it thank you so much for listening we will see you back here next Thursday with let me look Mike mussel gonna be talking about the belly fat effect hormones and fitting your diet the perfect diet on just an index card what does it say that's it thanks so much for listening see you next Thursday .

Video Description:

For more Paleohacks Podcast episodes, make sure to check out http://blog.paleohacks.com/category/podcast/

Do you suffer from chronic pain in your joints, neck, back or shoulders? Do you pop ibuprofen and ice your aches all day long? These popular methods might not be helping you, but stalling the healing process, according to family medicine physician and prolotherapist Dr. Chad Edwards.

What is prolotherapy? An alternative treatment to pain and inflammation, prolotherapy involves injecting a simple, safe solution to stimulate your body to heal itself. A functional medicine practitioner, Dr. Edwards observes a 90 percent success rate of the treatment in his clinic. Listen in to find out if the unique, better-than-painkillers therapy could be for you.

2:30: Soldiers and medical school: How Edwards got into prolotherapy.
6:30: “Stimulating your body to heal itself:” What you need to know about “proliferative therapy.”
8:30: “A success rate well into 90 percent:” How does prolotherapy work?
11:00: Don’t ice it: Why you shouldn’t fear inflammation.
14:00: Could prolotherapy treat your chronic back pain?
17:30: Why is prolotherapy still an underground treatment?
21:30: Dry-needling and prolotherapy: Why it’s not a placebo.
25:00: “A lot of my patients are working out the next day:” Why prolotherapy might be better than painkillers.
27:00: How to find a good prolotherapist: the Hackett Hemwall Foundation.
30:00: Stem cell therapy: What you should know.
33:00: “We can inject from the base of the skull down:” Who can prolotherapy help?
35:00: Ibuprofen: Is it stalling your healing?

GET THE FULL SHOW NOTES: http://blog.paleohacks.com/prolotherapy/

______________________________________

-PALEOHACKS -

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-CLARK DANGER -

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-CHAD EDWARDS-

➤WEBSITE: http://drchadedwards.com/
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➤TWITTER: https://twitter.com/drchadedwards
______________________________________

-YOU MAY ALSO LIKE -

JOE CROSS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyvXadgjmAI
CLARK DANGER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6C8OKDipAg
DR. DOUG MCGUFF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa3twg6T_fs

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October 13, 2020 Tags : back pain , chad edwards , inflammation , interview dr. chad edwards , painkillers , Paleo Diet , PaleoHacks Podcast , prolotherapy , Revolution Health Wellness Clinic , shoulder pain , Video

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