Re: ligament laxity

Hi Deanna I know what your going through with the ligament laxity issue. I'm a 23 yr. old student, and for the time being a "former powerlifter, due to ligamentous laxity. A about a year and a half ago my problems with ligamentous laxity begun. I really didn't understand the problems that I was having until recently reading about prolotherapy and then things just sort of clicked.

For me the prolotherapy has worked to an exent,..........I'm not 100% of where I used to be prior to the onslaught of laxity in almost every major joint in my body over the last year and half however, Prolotherapy has helped me to get back to about 85% in most excersises,(certain ones like pull ups I still can't do, b/c my glenohumeral joint will pop right out of the socket as soon as I hang on the bar).

So far I've had two T.X. of prolotherapy and what I've come to find,(for me anyway), is that I need to be "re-done" probably every six to seven weeks,.......however I do train heavy(370 bench, 560 squat, etc) and my nutrition/sleeping/emotional habbits or patterns haven't been the best with going to school full time, and working 2 jobs.

Previously to prolotherapy I've tried multitudes of therapies, exercieses, nutritional supplements, forms of guided imagery, etc. etc. etc. There are too many too list. However, what I've come to find so far,(and I'm still searching everything I can every day on the topic of ligamentous laxity), is that this is a topic that is relatively not covered by any form of western medicine, (with the exception of certain dr.'s......most likely D.O.'s or phsyiotherapists who perform prolotherapy). They tell you that you have some "play" in your joints, enough to cause constant irriation but not severe enough to warrant surgery. But you really wouldn't want surgery done anyway if you're having problems with serval joints.

PT's and or Orthopedist's can help you out if your laxity problems are either minor,(via PT exc. like proprioceptive and general rehab exc.) or major,...ie; total dislocation of your glenohumeral joint(helped via thermaloscopy--arthroscopic type of procedure using heat to shrink the joint capsule). However, from my understanding of the problem,.......if it is truly a problem steming from laxity and not other factors,(repetive blunt force trauma----bad landings from skydiving would wreck havoc on the hip joint's surrounding ligaments,....or severe muscle imbalance, etc.), then as mentioned in the previous reply it supposidly is genetic, and it is "disease like"---meaning that there isn't really anything that is going to "cure" it once it has started.
Again though, this is what I know from what I've read, and I'm certainly not an authority on the subject.

For me I've found that along with the prolotherapy P.T. rehab exercises, and proprioceptive exercises have been some what helpful. However, keep in mind that the two type of instabilities that chiro's or P.T.'s have to deal with in most patients are mostly dynamic,(instabilities resulting more or less from the musculature), as opposed to static,(instabilites resulting more or less from tendons and ligaments); for people who have true genetic ligametous/joint laxity P.T. exercises aren't going to be as effective as they would be for a "normal" person. These exercises will help, and definalty should defianlty be done, just don't expect to see the results that people with normal, dynamic instability problems have,.......b/c more of our problems are dealing with static instabilty,......ie; I can only hold a chrio adj. for a couple of hours if I'm lucky, even though my spinal errecotrs, deep abs and superficial ab muscles are quite strong.

My suggestion to you would only be what I myself have been doing so far,.......learn about and try out prolothearpy. There aren't too many physicians that perform this and different physicians get have a large price differntial. Best bet to find a physician who does this is to go to www.getprolo.com or to ask around about physiotherapists in the area,....they are almost always the only doctors that perform prolotherapy. Also look into getting a biomechanical analyis of your gait and mvmt patterns,(this helps some-what), definalty look into Physical therapy rehab and proprioceptive exc. for your joints, look into A.R.T.(www.activerelease.com), this is a soft tissue mgmt technique--- sort of like an advanced version of myofacial release,..... this helped me b/c of certain laxities in my SI joint had a domino effect on my musculature tightening many different areas up, thus making things worse,....A.R.T. helped loosen me back up again........in adition to PNF stretching. Paying extremely close attention to, getting checked for muscular imbalances has also aided me.

I've tried ligaplex 2, and have tried the good old osteoarthritis formulas of glucosamine, chondroiton, msm, SAM-E, etc. I take many of these, but personally haven't really seen any noticeable differance after 4 and a half months of use.

Also, if synovial fluid happens to be a problem in combination with your laxity,(which is most likely effected only by age), certain progressive sports med/orthopedic doctors have treated people by injectiong Growth Hormone into the afflicted areas.

I'm apologize for the great length of this reply,......I have suffered a lot under the lack of info concerning ligament laxity, and for me it's very frustrating having to give up my dream of competing in powerlifting at the national level at 23. I really feel for pple who are in the same boat as I am,..... having laxity problems therefore, I'd rather give too much info to pple who have this problem, than not enough, b/c believe me, there really isn't all that much out there as we'd like to think.

Regards, Garrett
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