Prolotherapy for Vagus Nerve Instability
What are the Vagus Nerves?: The vagus nerve (designated as CN X, medically), is a set of two nerves, one on the right side of the neck and one on the left side of the neck. It’s one of the longest and most important nerves in the body and helps control several crucial functions. It connects your brain to your gut and can affect everything from your mood and stress levels to your digestion, heart rate and immune response. It is a 2-way messenger network, passing messages and signals between the organs and brain to maintain heart rate, blood pressure, circulation, breathing, internal organ distension (for example the moving of food through the digestive system). It helps us talk, swallow, focus vision, hear, and understand.
What is Vagus Nerve Instability? Instability of the cervical spine, due to vagus nerve damage, occurs when the ligaments in between your spinal cord and skull are loose. These “lax ligaments” allow for excessive movement of the top two cervical vertebrae, which may result in many symptoms, such as headaches, fainting, or even memory loss. Ligament laxity is a state in which ligaments that attach bone to bone are loose. Also called ligamentous laxity, this condition often causes chronic pain. It can affect the whole body, or only specific parts.
Symptoms of cervical instability:
How can Prolotherapy help?: Prolotherapy is a relatively new treatment option for patients with cervical instability, often with no adverse side effects. Prolotherapy (proliferative therapy), ligament reconstruction therapy, and fibro-osseous injection therapy, is a recognized procedure that stimulates the body’s natural healing processes to strengthen joints weakened by traumatic or overuse injury. A 2007 case series showed that prolotherapy consistently improved neck pain in whiplash patients. Prolotherapy injections offer cervical instability patients an alternative to surgery. The injections are primarily periarticular – meaning around the vertebrae, not into the discs or spinal canal areas. Periarticular injections are given where the ligaments attach to the bone. The emphasis is on the outside of the joint versus the inside of a joint. A small amount of the injectable goes into the inside of the joint. Why the outside of the joint? The pain and cervical instability are caused in many people by loose or lax ligaments and that is what we are treating, the ligaments attach on the outside of the joint.
How successful is treatment?: The anticipated rate of success depends on a number of variables, including the patient’s history and ability to heal, and the type of solution used. In patients with low back pain with hypermobility, 85% to 95% of patients treated experience remission of pain with this form of therapy. In comparison, the Journal of Bone and Joint Therapy reports only a 52% improvement in patients treated surgically for disc involvement.. Many studies done over the years show a high success rate when prolotherapy is used for various ligament, tendon or joint pain/injuries.
Dr. Philipose has performed thousands of procedures for over 20 years. if you would like a second opinion or want more information on how Prolotherapy may help, call 405-848-7246 for a FREE consultation.
