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The reason articular cartilage has a poor regenerative capacity is due to its lack of blood flow. Articular cartilage is one of the only structures in the body that doesn’t have a direct blood supply. It is the oxygen and nutrients in our blood that help to repair and regenerate damaged tissue in other parts of the body. It can be associated with conditions like Knee Osteoarthritis, acute injury of the connective tissue and rheumatoid arthritis. Moreover, some patients may also report joint locking and clicking or grinding sensation on movement.
For cartilage repair and articular cartilage regeneration to take place, it relies on absorbing nutrients from the fluid in the knee, commonly known as ‘synovial fluid.’
The problem is, the levels of this fluid start to decline with age, causing articular cartilage to become brittle as the nutrient supply depletes. As you can imagine, a brittle structure struggles to absorb force as efficiently as a soft structure.
This means that over time, articular cartilage becomes vulnerable to tearing or wearing down, leading to joint pain and a diagnosis of knee cartilage damage or knee arthritis. It also leads to chronic inflammation in the affected limb and joint swelling.
Prolotherapy
In recent years, Prolotherapy has built its reputation within the medical community for its clinically proven ability to treat knee cartilage damage and act as an alternative to steroid injections or knee replacement surgery.
Research has proven its pain-relieving, anti-inflammatory and regenerative benefits.
Prolotherapy involves the injection of a natural regenerative solution which has been shown to stimulate chondrocytes, which are the small cells cartilage is made up of.
Prolotherapy has been shown to not only reduce pain, inflammation and stimulate cartilage growth, but also to repair and strengthen the ligaments within the knee, which have been put under additional strain from the instability that arthritis causes within a knee joint.
The injections are naturally anti-bacterial, so they are deemed one of the safest available injections within medicine. Its impeccable safety record has been the reason why thousands of doctors and practitioners around the world are now adopting it as an effective, non-invasive alternative to steroid injections or knee replacement surgery.