How We Helped Over 200 Patients Heal from Painful Physical Conditions Without Surgery

It used to be that if you were over the hill and suffering from chronic back pain, knee pain, joint pain or shoulder pain, you only had one of a limited number of options: pills, physical therapy or surgery.

While these options remain vitally important to treating patients looking to decrease pain and get their bodies performing well again, the reality is that most of these traditional methods for treating musculoskeletal conditions do not heal people.

Oftentimes, patients are left programmed into thinking that they either have to live the rest of their lives with the pain or, as a final option, get surgery.

But that’s so old school.

If you’ve always thought there had to be another way to heal your body from any number of short- or long-term physical or cognitive impairments, then we want to be the bearers of good news.

The answer lies with regenerative medicine.

Over the last 20 years as a licensed medical doctor and surgeon specializing in physical medicine and rehabilitation, Dr. Tolbert has cared for a countless number of patients who have suffered pain due to unimaginable tragedy—surgical complications, gunshot wounds to the head, rape, spine trauma, cancer—and our Center has seen amazing results when regenerative injection therapies are added to traditional methods for treating pain.

Using modern technology, we have been able to restore people’s quality of life, rejuvenate their bodies, and repair torn tendons, ligaments and cartilage—all without surgery right here at our Encino, CA, office.

We know what you might be thinking: This sounds like science fiction, right?

Using regenerative injection therapies is actually quite natural because your body is programmed to heal.

Here’s another way to put it: Have you ever cut yourself?

Now, imagine the bad open wound or cut and how much pain that causes.

Well, over the following days or weeks after the injury occurs, the wound begins to fill in with new tissue and eventually your body grows new skin.

If you are healthy, then there is a logical reason why you stopped bleeding and your body grew new tissue. It’s because of the platelets and proteins, known as growth factors, that activate the healing process.

That’s why we have found so much success after treating more than 200 patients with surgical alternatives like prolotherapy and platelet-rich plasma therapy. These techniques use your body’s own repair system to stimulate healing and get you moving again.

“Prolo,” short for proliferate, means to grow. As a treatment, prolotherapy is designed to rebuild and strengthen the body and, because prolotherapy stimulates growth factors, it is the direct opposite of surgery or cortisone injections.

Platelets stimulate stem cells to regrow tissue, such as joint cartilage, tendons and ligaments. With platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, a small amount of blood is taken from the patient and then the blood is placed in a centrifuge to separate the platelet-rich plasma from the other components. We then inject the PRP at the site of the patient’s injury.

In theory, PRP causes the release and makes more growth factors, which means we can now transplant patients’ stem cells for arthritis, for example, in order to grow new cartilage and make new joints.

This may eliminate the need for more aggressive treatments, such as long-term medication or surgery, and we’ve seen hundreds of patients make remarkable recoveries with the way their bodies function.

One of our recent patients had these exact results.

When the patient came to the Tolbert Center, she had round-the-clock Fentanyl patches glued to her body as a result of intense back pain. She said she could barely take five steps before having to sit back down.

Then Dr. Tolbert introduced her to PRP therapy, and Dr. Tolbert gave her three injections in her spine at three different times.

The results? At 60 years old, the patient is pain-free and doesn’t require any pain medications stronger than an Advil.

“I am a large-scale antiques collector,” she said, “and I am once again able to walk the miles-long weekend venues. Thank you for giving me back my life.”

Modern medical technology has shown us that we are living in a new generation—regeneration, that is—when it comes to healing people’s pain.

With these surgical alternatives, here is what we know to be true:

• We can use patients’ cells to heal damaged tissues.
• Age becomes just a number.
• No one has to live with pain.
• It doesn’t matter if you’ve suffered an injury. You can run, dance, golf, hike or do any physical activity at any age.
• But it’s always better to start treatment early. By being proactive and taking a deeper look at what might have caused the pain, you have a better chance of getting the results you desire, especially if you lead an active lifestyle.
• You can avoid surgery.

At the Tolbert Center, we make sure to bring in a team of rehabilitation professionals dedicated to each patient to accelerate the healing process even further.

By working together for each patient, we’re able to bring in DNA-based nutrition and determine if there any medications keeping people from healing. We’re able to customize programs for each patient because we understand that each person’s body is different. We’re also able to incorporate exercise into the healing process because, as Dr. Tolbert always says, exercise is the secret to the fountain of youth.

You know what’s most important about these new ways of treating musculoskeletal conditions? None of them involve surgery, and that’s what’s going to be most important to your body and your quality of life.