Prolozone Therapy Explained: Regenerative Relief for Joint Pain

Introduction to Prolozone and Ozone Therapy 0:00

It stands for intraosseous therapy, and I don't think there are many people in the country doing it. We had a physician from Russia come over to Miami one year for one of our master ozone groups, and he did a day of training for us, and it was fascinating. And, you know, he shared his own experience that this treatment was helping about 90% of back pain, whether it was low back pain, SI joint, thoracic pain. And the way that it works is there's this bastion's plexus, which is the vessels that surround the spine that help to feed the spine, but also pull out toxins and inflammation.

And when that kind of plexus of arteries and veins gets a little clogged up with inflammation, that can really increase pain and make it hard for people to heal. Your health is shaped by more than symptoms. Through real stories and expert insights, we explore how your genetics, environment, and daily choices affect your wellbeing. We uncover root causes and share practical tools to help you find the healing you need. Welcome to the Forum Health Integrative Medicine Podcast. Welcome to the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast.

I'm your host, Amanda Grabeau. I've been immersed in the functional and integrative medicine space for over a decade as a researcher, business consultant, and certified coach. I've been helping practitioners and patients decode the why behind chronic health patterns and how to unlock optimal health. Today I'm joined by Dr. Kristin Reynolds, a board certified physician with Forum Health serving the Wisconsin-Milwaukee area. Dr. Reynolds is known for her expertise in treating complex chronic conditions, including Lyme disease, mold illness, and chronic fatigue.

Using an integrative approach that blends advanced diagnostic with cutting edge therapies, her own family's health journey led her to explore ozone and regenerative treatments, which she now uses to help patients restore function and vitality. In this episode, we're talking about prolozone therapy, what it is, how it works, and when it can be a game changer for pain and recovery. Let's jump into my conversation with Dr. Reynolds. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Integrative Medicine Podcast.

I'm Amanda, your host, and I'm joined with Dr. Kristin Reynolds in our Milwaukee locations in Wisconsin. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so excited to have you on. Today, we are talking about prolozone and ozone therapy. I love this therapy and I love this topic, so I'm so excited to dive in. Ozone is usually thought of as a toxic gas, but in medicine, carefully controlled ozone therapies are being used for chronic pain, joint degeneration, infections, and even immune support. Today, we'll dig into prolozone therapy, what it is, how it works, and when it may be worth considering.

So, Dr. Reynolds, Let's talk about prolozone. Sure. What is it? Okay, so prolozone is kind of a combination of two words.

What Prolozone Is and How Medical Ozone Works 2:50

Some people have heard of prolotherapy, which is injection of an inert substance into like a soft tissue. And then Dr. Schallenberger added the word ozone in there, so prolozone. So it's basically a combination of an injection of a substance plus the ozone gas into a joint or a soft tissue for healing. Awesome. You know, a lot of people consider ozone as a pollutant, but we're talking about injecting this into the body right now. So how is medical ozone different and safe when used clinically? Yeah.

So ozone is a gas made of three oxygen molecules, and people think about it in the atmosphere on a bad air quality day. And it's true, it's a marker for pollution, but when made medically and used appropriately, it has a lot of healing properties and it's very safe. Ozone kills pathogens. It kills bacteria, virus, fungus, yeast, mold, parasites. It stimulates stem cell production and migration. Obviously, stem cells can be very helpful for healing damaged tissue. And ozone turns on detoxification pathways, so that can help to pull out inflammation from joints or tissues.

That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of stuff, yeah. And there's more, but those are the big three. Wow. And in your practice, you do prozone injections into the joints in different areas, too. You also use ozone therapy as an IV. Yes. What's the difference between prozone being injected versus being delivered through IV? Yeah. For intravenous, we're not injecting the gas directly into the vein. We're actually taking blood out, ozonating the blood, and then putting it back in. And ozone has a very short half-life.

It dissipates in about 10 to 20 seconds. So it's not really ozone that goes back into the body in the vein. You know, when we're doing intravenously, it's more the downstream products, which are called ozonides. And those are what have the beneficial effects that I was talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's very safe and we certainly can talk about that if you'd like. And then prolozone, when you're injecting it more into a localized area like a knee for arthritis, it's going to act a little bit more locally for healing versus the systemic application is more for systemic illnesses like autoimmune conditions, persistent Lyme, tick-borne, those types of things.

I did check with my dad first. My dad is actually a patient of Dr. Reynolds and he does high dose ozone IV therapy with you and it has been such a huge change for him. He had a lot of underlying systemic inflammation in his body and he's getting feeling back in his feet and he's walking.

Joint Pain, Arthritis, and Treatment Applications 5:29

It's fantastic. It's been so, so powerful to see him, which is why I'm so excited to have you talking about this is because I've seen it in real life. Really make an impact on my family personally. So speaking of that, what kind of conditions or pain syndromes respond best to Prolizone? So, I think the number one thing we're using Prozone for is joint pain. And that could be, you know, knee, shoulder, hip, any joint really. I mean, I do, you know, TMJ, the tougher my gibber joint, very small joints, but probably most commonly we're doing some of the bigger joints.

And usually that's arthritis or degenerative joint disease. But it could be a, you know, partial meniscal tear. You know, it could be other joint and cartilage issues. but really, you know, accelerates the healing process and can be, you know, very helpful in those situations. That's probably the most common thing that we use it for. There are some situations where people, for instance, have like a chronic or persistent tick-borne illness, Bartonella, and some of these other bugs will like to settle in a joint and so sometimes we will use it and people will get, in those situations, they'll get like swollen joints and we'll have to like pull some fluid off and then we'll add a little bit of prolozonin and that can help.

At Forum Health, we uncover the why behind your symptoms. With advanced lab testing, hormone optimization, and cutting-edge therapies, we help you heal and perform your best. And now, through shopforumhealth.com, you can access physician-grade supplements trusted by our providers, supporting everything from adrenal health to focus and longevity. Learn more at forumhealth.com and explore supplements at shopforumhealth.com. Wow. Yeah. So it can be used in that, but mostly it's like joint pain arthritis.

Okay. Cool. Awesome. I did an interesting therapy with you in your office with ozone called IOT. So a little bit different than pro-ozone, but you did. I have a low chronic degenerative disc disease in my low back. And so I had a little bit of a flare up one day. And Dr. Reynolds was wonderful to do a little bit of ozone directly into my back. So I don't know exactly. So you did IOT on me. Yeah. And I'll kind of explain it. It stands for intraosseous therapy, and I don't think there are many people in the country doing it.

We had a physician from Russia come over to Miami one year for one of our master ozone groups, and he did a day of training for us, and it was fascinating. And he shared his own experience that this treatment was helping about 90% of back pain, whether it was low back pain, SI joint, thoracic pain. And the way that it works is there's this bastion's plexus, which is the vessels that surround the spine that help to feed the spine, but also pull out toxins and inflammation. And when that kind of plexus of arteries and veins gets a little clogged up with inflammation, That can really increase pain and make it hard for people to heal.

And by doing this technique, and I'll give you my blog on it in a second, but IoT is basically putting a needle into the posterior superior iliac spine,

Intraosseous Therapy for Back and SI Joint Pain 8:51

which is that bone when you put your hands on your hips that, you know, your thumb rests on. It's super easy to access. I mean, you don't need, like, x-ray imaging. It's right there. And it's pretty painless. You know, we numb it up with... I can testify to that. Yeah, I mean, you really didn't have any pain. No, so easy. I just laid on my back and I let it happen. Yeah, yeah. And so once the needle goes in there, it's almost like a pressure valve being released, and it helps to release that pressure in the bastion's plexus.

And then there's a couple other things we can add on to that. We can do a little... I always forget the name for the treatment. I want to call it balayage, but that's a hair thing. on my blog. It was basically like we push in a solution a little bit and then kind of pull out a little bit of blood from that area mixed around, push back in. And that is also providing like some nutrients for the bastion's plexus. And then the final thing, I think we did that on you, was we dripped in some ozone saline.

And that just really, you know, it's able, just by getting into that one little needle on that bone, it cleanses the whole spine. It's so targeted. I mean, it's the ozonated saline going into the spine and clearing out that clutter and helping get rid of... Right. And to clarify, not right into the spine, but into that vascular plexus that's bathing the spine. And so it seems to provide, number one, a pressure release to pull out some inflammation, then number two, that cleansing. I just did it on an 80-year-old male who had chronic SI joint pain that was really debilitating and keeping him from doing things, and four months out he still tells me he's pain-free, and that was one.

I think that I was really sore when I was in, and I felt like getting up was, I felt it. It felt better when you got up. It was so great. little bit of a sidetrack there, but it was so good. And so if you just search like Forum Health, Reynolds IoT, that blog will pop up and that explains it. It's a great blog. Yes. Find that if you're interested. How does Prozone compare with like cortisone injections or even surgery in certain cases? Yeah, so go and do a PubMed search of steroid or corticosteroid joint injection and then do a PubMed search of like prolozone or ozone therapy for arthritis and you'll find more positive studies on prolozone injections for knee arthritis than you will for steroid injections.

That's incredible. Yeah. And, you know, steroids, we really have to be careful with steroids because they're chondrotoxic. So they can be toxic to the cartilage and different, you know, the ligaments and in the joint, whereas the ozone has that healing effect. So ozone is not only going to decrease inflammation and take away pain, but it's actually going to stimulate a healing response and steroids do not do that. No, they just... Yeah. Masks, the inflammation. Masks, the inflammation, yeah. And then can have, there's risks associated with them.

And it doesn't always just stay local. I mean, I've had patients who've come in after a local steroid injection and they've had systemic adverse effects. So, you know, we have to be careful about that. It seems pretty like that's the one you want to do first. Well, yeah. And so the other thing is it can delay the need for surgery. So I have a lot of patients coming in saying, you know, my doctor wants me to get a knee replacement or, you know, whatever. And I'm just not ready yet. And I kind of want to, you know, punt that down the road a little bit.

And ProloZone can do that. It can kind of push that need down the road, especially if we're catch it before people are bone on bone. I mean, if I get people who are, you know, bone on bone arthritis and really at that point where they're needing. There's not much there to say. stimulate because you kind of need, what happens in those bone-on-bone cases is that you still, even with the ozone or even stem cells and exosomes, because those are also adjunct, those are add-on therapies as well, but you need something there to at least stimulate the regenerative properties of these therapies.

It's a little harder with bone-on-bone, but we've had a lot of folks who we can really push surgery down the road and keep them pain-free. So that's been really fun to see. And then of course, you know, prolazone, you can add on the stem cells. That was my next question. Like peptides is a big one, PRP, stem cells, exosomes. So we offer those and you offer those in your clinic. So you do combine them. Are there cases where you would... would suggest adding those add-on therapies over other cases, or?

Comparing Prolozone to Steroids and Surgery 13:23

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, if I have somebody with, you know, more severe degenerative joint disease where they're really heading towards surgery, I'm probably going to recommend the add-on stem cells plus PRP, and we use a lovely product from Vidipir that's umbilical cord-based, not embryonic-based, and that means a lot to many of my patients. and ethically sourced, and the FDA watching them really closely in a partnership. And so those are great products and I think a lower price point than a lot of the stem cell products that are out there.

That's great. And the options, I think that's just great to have the different options for different people, the different price points, and also just the different need, person to person. How many sessions does it typically take a patient before they see results? So that's a great question. As we know, healing depends on a person's age, a person's comorbidities, you know, what other chronic health problems do they have going on? What's your diet like? You know, all of the integrative and functional medicine foundational pieces.

So everybody's going to heal a little bit differently. I do have people who are one and done. They'll come in for like a knee injection and I don't see them again for years. But those are usually the 20-somethings who tweak their knee on the soccer field. They're young, they have a lot of healing capability. And then if people are a little bit more mature and maybe struggling with other comorbidities, maybe the diet's not quite tuned in, it sometimes can take a few more. So I usually recommend I advise patients to try and wrap their mind around a series of three separate prolozone injections with me, separated by about two to three weeks.

And so we do the first one, get them back and say, hey, you know, what did it feel like when you left here? And almost always they have pain relief immediately. Part of that's from the prokane, the numbing medication that we use. But most of them will still have pain relief or some form of improvement for at least a week or two. Sometimes in patients who have more going on, that's going to wear off. By the time they get back to me to two or three weeks and they can be a little disappointed that that's worn off, but we add on that second one and it's cumulative.

Yes, it builds on the first. It's a compound effect. I think that was a really good point that you made, too. There's the acute that this applies to, and then there's the chronic. I would also offer up a third category of preventative, too, for those people who are not—I get to be more preventative because I am in this space and I know a lot. So I actually do preventative prolozone injections in my knees and in my shoulder once a year at least. I do have some knee pain here and there and then I'll go and get my acute little need taken care of.

But for those who have chronic pain, we didn't get here overnight. And so we're not going to correct things overnight either. And so treatment series are a big component to the success of the long-term success because there is some, many people might feel that immediate relief, but it's the treatment series that's going to give you the long-term benefits. And so it would typically kind of stack two or three in a row. Yeah. And then also, if that person is not feeling like they're getting sustained relief by that second or third, that's when I would add on stem cells, PRP, that type of thing.

So we've been talking about prolozone therapy, which is the joint injection form more so.

Treatment Series, Add-Ons, and Other Ozone Delivery Methods 16:48

We talked a little bit. I didn't explain it totally, prolozone. I mentioned the word was kind of created by Dr. Schallberger. Initial prolo part is a solution, a liquid solution with prokane for numbing, D vitamins, minerals from the ocean that help with healing, and then the ozone gas comes after that. Yeah. That's how it works. I love that. And we touched a little bit on the IV ozone. Are there other ways of ozone delivery that patients can consider? Yes, just about. Yeah, there are many. My two favorite are ear and nasal, but there's also rectal and vaginal.

I mean, just about any orifice can put ozone in. Oral. Yes, yeah. A lot of people now are using ozonated glycerin as a big thing that's starting, and that could be something that you swallow or that you do like a mouth rinse. Some people do drink ozonated water. I guess I have a little bit of concerns about the microbiome. I just want to be a little bit careful about that with people. Proceed with caution. Yeah, or work with somebody. Ask questions. Yeah, and make sure you're supporting the microbiome and everything.

Ear ozone is one of my favorites, and that's where we put a stethoscope-like attachment in the ear, and we trickle ozone into the ear, and it diffuses across the tympanic membrane and really can go into the inner ear. I think of it as anything kind of head and neck. So tinnitus and vertigo are two very difficult to treat conditions in mainstream medicine. We don't have a lot for them, but we have about a 70% efficacy with aerosol for vertigo, which is dizziness, or tinnitus, which is that loud ringing that people get in their ear, and it's very annoying.

It can be really debilitating for people, and so we have about a 70% success rate using aerosol for those two things. And then anything head or neck, so if like you feel a cold coming on or you got some seasonal allergies, your ozone works very nice for that. Very nice. I love that. And then I mentioned the nasal ozone. I mean, the one thing you usually don't want to do with ozone is breathe it because it can be toxic to the lungs. However, if you trickle ozone through olive oil, the polyphenols in the olive oil grab onto the toxic component of the ozone and make it safe to breathe.

We do the olive oil, nasal ozone at our clinic. Who, if, why would I want nasal? Or what would I... Yeah, why would I want nasal? Lung stuff, you know, cough, like a post-viral cough. Got it. Or, you know, if you're in the midst of a bronchitis or COVID infection, that can be helpful. Okay, wonderful. For patients listening who are curious, how can they find a qualified ozone provider? It sounds like, you know, we're talking a lot about this and proceed with caution and stuff. You want somebody who understands ozone and you as an individual patient as well.

So how can our listeners find a qualified ozone provider? What are the trainings or certifications they should be on the lookout for? Well, I mean, I think Forum Health in general has a lot of practitioners who've been doing this for many years who are skilled, who know what they're doing. There is an organization called AAOT, American Academy of Ozone Therapy, and that's Dr. Schallenberger's group. And he's got, I think, a certification program through there. But I'm going to admit, I went to the training, but I never took the time to do the certification because who does time?

So you're not going to find me on there. So I think just do your research. And your experience speaks for itself. Your results, your patients, it speaks for itself. Yeah, I think so. Wonderful. I'm so happy that we had you on here today. This is such a great therapy for patients. I know I've seen it work for myself and other people of my family. I've heard so many great testimonials from your patients. I have the opportunity to be in your clinic on a regular basis, and it's incredible to see the journey that people are on with you.

Prozone is a form of regenerative injections that uses medical ozone to reduce pain and support healing in joints and tissues.

Finding a Qualified Ozone Provider and Closing Remarks 20:38

The early research shows promise, especially for arthritis and chronic pain, it's not the same as environmental ozone. It's carefully dosed and administered by trained clinicians. For patients, it may be an option when standard injections or medications aren't enough. We offer this at our Milwaukee locations and in other locations across the country. How can patients find you? Oh, that's a great question. Look at us first on our Forum Health website. Find a provider and you can look for Dr. Kristin Reynolds.

She is in our Mequon and our Brookfield locations. Thank you for that. You're welcome. Have a great rest of your day and thank you so much for joining us. I can't wait to have you back on the podcast for more. Great. Thank you. Stay tuned for next week's episode. Thank you for joining us on the Forum Health Integrative Medicine podcast. Each episode, we help you understand your health from every angle and inspire your lifelong wellness journey. Follow the show, share it with someone who needs hope, leave a review, and take the next step toward feeling your best at forumhealth.com.