So you’ve had PRP before and you didn’t get the benefit you wanted whether it was for:
- Joint pain
- Injury
- Hair rejuvenation
- Or fine lines and wrinkles.
There are only a couple of reasons this happened. The first and most important step prior to the actual procedure is being screened for chronic inflammation. With PRP you are making your own medicine and using it to heal your body. AMAZING!
But if your platelets and plasma are not of high quality than the therapy is less likely to give the desired effect. The things that hurt your stem cells, platelets and plasma are:
- Blood sugar regulation issues such as diabetes
- Obesity and being sedentary
- Smoking
- Low muscle mass
- Poor diet choices or inflammatory diet
- Poor hormone profile
- Too much alcohol consumption
It is imperative to have your doctor look at your overall health prior to treatment in order to make sure you are getting the best results possible and to understand that if you are not getting the intended outcome why that has happened.
The next thing that could have happened is the physician missed the pain generator. In many cases PRP is being done with an ultrasound in one specific or two specific points. While having an ultrasound is important for more dangerous areas like the neck; it often becomes a handicap. The joint is a system in and of itself. It’s extremely important the physician you are working with has:
- A long history of needle therapy
- Very skilled palpation techniques
- Unmatched diagnostic skills prior to or completely without imaging
- And an in depth knowledge of anatomy
While that may seem like common sense, it is not. The skill of palpation and anatomy has been lost in many facilities because we are relying more on machines to do these things for us. If your doctor embodies the list above you are much more likely to get a better result with your PRP treatments because the joint will be treated as a whole instead of separated into it’s parts. Any physician can inject juice in a joint but getting it to the right places makes all the difference.
Lastly what could have occurred is that you may need more treatments. There is a protocol for different issues and injuries, it is important to have realistic expectations and good communication between you and your doctor on approximately how many treatments are needed to get the desired effects and knowing what the next steps are if the treatment is ineffective.
Dr. Nixon has a Masters Degree in Acupuncture, and certificates in trigger point therapy, prolotherapy, platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapy as well as many other types of injection therapies. She has participated in Doctors Without Borders in Mexico treating many underprivileged populations with these therapies.
This makes her exceptionally skilled with treatments involving injections as well as different from other physicians out there practicing these therapies. The degree in Acupuncture alone has given her thousands of hours more than most other doctors and made her a master at understanding palpation, functional anatomy, and needle depth. It also gives her a unique and amazing perspective of the wide variety of benefits that needle therapies have.
Dr.Nixon is effortlessly able to choose which one is best for your condition and combine them if the situation calls for it as it often does. If you’d like to give PRP another shot (pun intended) or you’d like to try it for the first time your first step is to call our office at (206) 899-6000 so we can answer any questions you may have, the second step is to schedule an initial screening appointment with us either on-line or by phone, and the third step is to join our email list so you can receive the latest information and news letters from Dr.Nixon. Stop feeling frustrated and start feeling better now. We are very excited you have chosen us to be a part of your health care team!
