2011 Page 1 Page 2  Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8

I had a bicycling accident three years ago that resulted in multiple injuries including severe whiplash and a compression fracture of one of my thoracic vertebra (T7).  Although the fractures healed, I was left with severe headaches due to the damage to my neck and upper back as well as muscle spasms in my upper back, specifically in the area around the T7 fracture. 

 Over the past 3 years I have had extensive physiotherapy, massage, yoga therapy as well as IMS (intramuscular stimulation) and acupuncture.  However, none of these therapies alleviated my headaches – I was fatigued most of the time and often had to spend part of the day in a prone position to alleviate pain in my upper back.  My physiotherapist suggested seeing Dr. Panet, and after much hesitation and scepticism on my part, I made an appointment with him.

  I was extremely impressed by Dr. Panet’s professionalism and concern, so much so that I decided to try the prolotherapy treatments.  After two or three treatments my headaches disappeared.  My energy level increased and I am ecstatic to report that after my final treatment I rarely have any back pain, and when I do, simple stretching exercises now relieve any symptoms.  I don’t want to think about what my life would be like had I not met Dr. Panet and had these treatments – for me, the treatments have returned me to the active life I led before I had my accident and have allowed me to return to work free from pain.  Thank you so much Dr. Panet!

 M. B.

 Rossland, BC

November 16, 2010

At thirty-four years old and just six weeks into my first pregnancy, I began to experience terrible pain in my hips and lower back.  While this hip and sacrum instability was exacerbated by my pregnancy, it is likely the result of a pre-adolescent injury that has periodically flared up throughout my adult life.

 Prior to my pregnancy I had been very active, regularly road biking and cross country skiing.  By the end of my pregnancy, it was often difficult for me to simply walk.  Due to inactivity and resulting depression, I had gained a notable amount of weight and I often found myself despairing. 

 For two and a half years following the birth of my child, I worked closely with a wonderful physiotherapist.  While I learned a great deal about the triggers that caused my hip pain and that it was likely contributing to limiting knee pain I have been experiencing for the past four years, we were only able to reduce my pain by approximately 10%-20%.  I still found myself forced to reduce my activity level and carrying 15 additional pounds. My lower back/hips hurt daily and my knees were worse than ever.  I also had to be extremely cautious about lifting, this included my two year old son.  The inability to regain my fitness and lead an active lifestyle was weighing very heavily on me.  At this point my physiotherapist referred me to see Dr. Panet.

 I had several concerns prior to pursuing treatment with Dr. Panet not the least of which was the reality that his practice is located eight hours away from where I live.  I was also concerned about the pain associated with the needles and the cost.  I was also somewhat sceptical.  Several more months with little or no improvement in my hip and sacrum stability, continued knee pain, combined with further discussion with my physiotherapist and many evenings of online research convinced me it was worth a try.

 Due to the eight hour drive between my home and his office, I have only been able to receive four treatments in approximately eight months. Even if I had the treatment and it turned out to be ineffective, the initial consultation would have been worthwhile simply to meet with Dr. Panet.  His remarkably thorough preliminary examination, his understanding of biomechanics and his willingness to teach are truly impressive and inspiring.  I have never worked with another health practitioner who so quickly got to the root of my multiple aches and pains.  It is also worth nothing that Dr. Panet is an athlete and is thus, extremely sympathetic to the frustrations of forced inactivity.  

 Fortunately for me, the treatments in combination with exercises prescribed by both my physiotherapist and Dr. Panet have been incredibly successful.  Two days after my first treatment, I actually contacted Dr. Panet to find out if it was indeed possible to be experiencing such a considerable improvement in my condition over such as short amount of time.  I just did not want to get my hopes up.  While I am told it is not the normal, it is indeed possible.  Following my second appointment, I estimated   I would say my hips were at least 90% improved.  My sacrum has been similarly responsive.  And although we have just begun to treat my knees, the increased stability in my hips has already drastically improved my knees.  These improvements have also been noted by my physiotherapist.  I am continuing the treatments with Dr. Panet but I am already able to lead a far more active lifestyle,  I am able to lift and carry, and have lost most of the remaining 15 pounds.

 IS PROLOTHERAPY COSTLY?  The cost really is negligible relative to both the improvement and the cost of ongoing physiotherapy and massage therapy to manage pain.

 IS PROLOTHERAP PAINFUL?  Sometimes, I dread needles and on at least one occasion I have fainted during a blood test.  I found that some of the prolotherapy needles were pretty darn painful while others were almost unnoticeable.  Dr. Panet is both confident and compassionate and does everything he can minimize the discomfort and expedite the process.  The needles however are nothing compared to a lifetime of hip and knee pain.

 HOW LONG IS THE RECOVERY?   My recovery time has varied after each session.  Following my first two appointments, I felt little or no pain by day two.  By day three I was feeling a marked improvement in my condition.  After my third and fourth treatments focused on my sacrum as opposed to my hips I was sore for a week to ten days. 

 Is it difficult to convey the sincerity of my enthusiasm, but I hope it suffices to say that I have recommended prolotherapy and specifically, Dr. Panet to those I care about most.

 E. M. Nelson, BC

December 2010

I have been involved in various sports for most of my life, starting with football when I was eight and then racquet sports after leaving school. After playing squash for a few years I started playing racquetball and started competing in tournaments almost immediately. Although I did some weight training, cycling, golf and rollerblading for periods over the years, racquetball was my main source of fitness.

 After about 20 years of racquetball my hip started to bother me. After the tournament season finished in the late spring I would take time off to rehab over the summer with twice a week chiropractic and massage therapy but soon after I started playing racquetball again in the fall my hip would flare up again. After a couple of years of that I eventually had to give racquetball and squash up completely.

 After 4 different chiropractors and five different massage therapists I finally found a chiropractor who specialized in sports rehabilitation and had his own x-ray machine. The x-rays he took indicated 4 compressed vertebras with bone spurs on one side of my thoracic spine area and three in my lower lumbar spinal area on the same side. He also indicated that he felt my hip joint was half worn out and that I would probably need a hip replacement in the coming years. This was all due to the one sided repetitiveness of racquetball at the level I had been playing.

 At this time I was having problems with my hip rotating and getting jammed into my pelvis. This would lead to tightness in my poas and QL muscles that would tend to lock up my ribs surrounding my compressed thoracic vertebras. It would sometimes take weeks and numerous adjustments to get this corrected. Everything was fine once the muscles had relaxed enough not to spasm but as soon as I did anything the least bit strenuous I would be back at the chiropractors office. This cycle continued over 8 years as my hip continued to jam even when I tried to play golf.  Even the core strengthening exercises my chiropractor gave me almost immediately caused my core muscles to spasm and lock up either my hip and/or my rib area.

 I tried every kind of massage therapy and even Rolfing but it wasn’t until I discovered Pilates that I started to make some progress. With personal instruction on the Reformer I was able to finally isolate my deep core muscles and work through the spasms without having my hip and rib area lock up on me. After two years of Pilates three times a week my core was strong enough that I wanted to try some weight training to see if I could get strong enough to enjoy some other sports like golf and biking that I still hadn’t been able to participate in.

 I tried several personal trainers and after several failed attempts that put me back in the chiropractor’s office for more adjustments I was recommended to a personal trainer that was also trained in Kinesiology. She worked very slowly with me at first and after working out with her twice a week for over 2 years while I maintained my Pilates sessions I was able to get most of my strength back as well as build up my cardio fitness again.

 Things were going well as I realized that regular cardio and weight training sessions mixed in with my Pilates class and once a week Yoga classes to keep me flexible would allow me to once be active. My routine also involved a massage therapy session at the end of the week and I was regularly seeing three different massage therapists as well as having a monthly Rolfing session. I was getting a lot of good results from Cranial Sacral as well as Acupressure Massage. When I felt I had done something a little too strenuous, I would take a Robaxaset and an Advil to keep my muscles from becoming too tight and locking up either my hip or ribs.

 I was now able to play golf on a regular basis in the summer but it had become my routine to take a Robaxaset and an Advil half way through before my hip would start to get fatigued enough to start to cause my ribs to tighten up. I would also take a Robaxaset and an Advil before going to bed to keep from being too stiff and possibly locked up again in the morning. It was an old technique I had used when playing two racquetball matches a day over a 4 day weekend tournament however, I did not feel good about having to take drugs on such a regular basis.

 I figured if that is what I had to do to keep out of the chiropractors office and keep being active that is what I would do. I was still getting a routine adjustment every couple of months and also getting some spinal decompression sessions in before my adjustments to loosen things up. I was also doing weekly infrared sauna sessions to keep things loose as well.

 Everything was fine until my personal trainer took sick and had to take a year off. Left to my own workouts I became a little repetitious in the exercises I was doing and after about 9 months my back started to really lock up. I had already noticed that my hip was starting to jam up again and I had already had to cut out a lot of leg exercises.

 It was the middle of the summer and I remember my back locked up on me in the middle of a golf game. It was painful every time I swung the club. The drugs didn’t do a thing for it.  I was in constant pain and my chiropractor was away on holidays for two weeks. I had three very intense massage therapy sessions that week, trying to get my QL muscle to let go of my ribs, along with some other really tight back muscles. I had to stop all exercise as I tried to get my back and ribs to let go.

 This time I was frustrated enough to see my GP about getting an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to investigate the possibility of a hip replacement. I figured it must be time if I couldn’t do anything anymore without my hip jamming and I was certain that was what was causing my back and rib area to lock up as well. I couldn’t even walk for longer than 20 minutes before I had to stop, rest and stretch my back, hip and side muscles because of the pain in my hip.

 It was at this time that one of my massage therapists suggested that I check out Dr. Panet’s website. She had investigated prolotherapy before and had a client recommend Dr. Panet and she was considering making an appointment herself to see if prolotherapy would work on a similar issue she had been dealing with herself.

 I emailed Dr. Panet my history the night before my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. I had already researched all the available artificial hips and surgical techniques before my appointment and I wasn’t completely disappointed when the surgeon I saw said he didn’t think I was a candidate at this time for hip replacement. The artificial hips I saw in his office were certainly not the latest or most advanced that I knew were available and I already knew I would need to seek a second opinion.

 Dr. Panet had called and left me a message by the time I got out of my appointment and suggested that he might be able to help if I came in for an assessment.

 After a thorough exam Dr. Panet suggested that he thought my hip wasn’t in bad shape at all! Furthermore, he pinpointed that what was really inflamed in my hip area was not my hip flexor or a groin pull, which is what I had been treated for more than 10 years for but a small muscle that attached to the front of my pelvis. He also thought that most of the problem with my hip had started from a weak ankle which had also caused a problem with my knee.

 When he said this I immediately realized that I had complained many times to massage therapists and chiropractors over the years that my ankle always kept swelling up after walking 18 holes of golf or hiking or playing squash or racquetball ever since the last bad ankle sprain I had on the racquetball court over 25 years ago. To me it seemed that it had never completely healed.

 Dr. Panet explained that the way I had injured it had caused the muscle running up the outside of my calf to tighten, thereby causing a problem with where it attached to my knee. I realized that my knee had started bothering me when I was cycling, long before my hip ever started to bother me and that before my knee started to bother me I used to get muscle spasms in a muscle on the outside of my calf so bad on the racquetball court that you could see the knot in it.

 I agreed to start prolotherapy treatments on my ankle, knee and hip right then and there.

 The first treatment was a little intense even if it was mostly painless as I didn’t really know what to expect. I took it easy for a couple of days but I could already feel a difference in my balance when I walked. I immediately felt more stable in my weak ankle and more balanced on both sides.

 I felt much better after my second treatment 3 weeks later and a few days after that decided to try a round of golf. It was the first round I had played in over 8 weeks since my back had locked up. I had followed Dr. Panet’s instructions and had taken no drugs of any kind even though he said Tylenol was okay as long as I didn’t take any anti-inflammatory medication like Advil. Even though my back muscles got fatigued, everything was fine the next day. I was not stiff or sore after I got up in the morning and did some light stretching.

 That was exciting! First hearing that Dr. Panet felt my hip wasn’t in bad shape and that my muscles didn’t seem to be getting tight enough to lock up my ribs or jam my hip. Secondly, that I wasn’t taking any medications anymore!

 After my third treatment I was excited enough to start testing things out. I was still taking it easy but I decided to go back to the gym and do some light, high repetition exercises including some step ups to see how my hip would react. It got fatigued like before but it recovered nicely by the morning.

 Since it was still golfing weather I decided to try walking 18 holes again. I picked what I thought was going to be a fairly flat course but we hadn’t played it before and it turned out to be quite hilly. After the first 9 holes my hip muscles were completely fatigued and my back was starting to tighten up so we took a power cart for the back nine. The last couple of holes weren’t very good as my back muscles continued to tighten up and I thought I had overdone it. I was really quite stiff and sore that evening and thought for sure I would be seized up in the morning without taking any drugs.

 I was completely surprised when I woke up and really wasn’t sore or still at all. After a few light stretches I was ready to consider playing another round of golf! I hadn’t been able to play back to back rounds of golf since I could remember! I wasn’t going to walk the course again but I played all 18 holes without any stiffness and shot a great round to boot!

 I have had a total of 5 sessions now over approximately 10 weeks. I have taken no drugs of any kind and that by itself is completely amazing to me. I have been back in the gym and two weeks ago got my personal trainer back as she is now recovered enough to start training clients again. I have done step ups and lunges in the gym, still keeping it light with high repetitions, and played more golf, even back to back games again, without my hip jamming or my ribs locking up.

 I even went downhill skiing a couple of weeks ago for the first time in over 4 years and spend 3 hours doing constant runs. Needless to say, not having a lot of skiing experience to begin with but managing to get down all the Blue runs at Sun Peaks, my legs were burning like I don’t ever remember in the gym. The next day, again, I was neither stiff or sore. I knew my legs had a good workout and they were still a little tired but my hip didn’t jam like it would have before.

 I continue to feel my body rebalancing itself and my weak side still needs some exercise to regain the strength it had lost over the years but I continue to do the specific exercised Dr. Panet gave me to strength those weak muscles and getting back into the gym with my personal trainer is already making a huge difference. I still feel a little soreness in my ankle from time to time and I continue to stretch out that calf muscle that still feels a little tight but after 25 years I expect it to take a little time to get back to the way it should be.

 I can’t wait to get back on the slopes and do some more skiing over the Christmas holidays and I’m already looking forward to golf season next summer. I’ve even thought about playing a little recreational squash again. I doubt I will ever get back on the racquetball court as I have no interest in causing more wear on my compressed vertebrae no matter how much I miss playing. I’ll be fine as long as I can play golf and do the other active things I enjoy.

 I am absolutely thrilled that I’m not even thinking about hip replacement surgery anymore.

 I hope my experiences are helpful to others who might be considering prolotherapy and I would not hesitate to recommend them to Dr. Panet for his assessment and treatment.

 Keith B.

60 years old

(going on 40…again!)

Langley, BC.

December 2010

Prolotherapy saved my back I truly mean it. I've played competitive sports all my life. I had my first back surgery in my early teens, followed by a second back surgery to completely remove a disc in my early twenties. The second surgery left me with constant back spasms, hypermobility and clicking/popping at the joint where the surgery was done for several years. Physiotherapy, IMS (painful type of accupuncture), ultrasound, yoga, massage therapy, chiropractors, you name it, I've tried it. None were able to produce long lasting results. I was a bit apprehensive at first to the idea of prolotherapy, lets face it you're getting injections around your spine. There is pain involved with the injections, but nothing a few colourful swear words couldn't fix :o) After several sessions of prolotherapy with Dr. Panet my back spasms had been significantly reduced and the hypermobility was gone. The cost is definitely worth it!

 Dr. Panet is a excellent doctor. Very knowledgeable, caring and friendly. I felt totally comfortable with Dr. Panet a definite must when you've got a fear of needles.  Thank you Dr. Panet from the bottom of my heart!!!

 M.C.

December 2010

Sept. 2/10

 There is nothing more important than a healthy body.  A person doesn't realize until something goes wrong.  I am a LPN at a local hospital and very fortunate to have not suffered any serious injuries from my work place.  I presently work in a very heavy atmosphere and always thinking about body mechanics.  Unfortunately, sometime two years ago, I pulled my SI joint area.  I tried physio and lidocaine pain control for this injury but eventually had to resort to something else.  My physiotherapist had done her homework on Prolotherapy and told me I should try this procedure.  I did some research on the internet and didn't understand the whole process but thought I should try as the next step would be to go off work indefinitely.  I told my Doctor about this procedure and she set me up with Dr. John Panet, as he just happened to be in my area talking to some Doctors about this procedure.  I have never looked back and have been receiving Prolotherapy for about one and half years and still continuing.  The trip is eight hours away but worth the travel.  Talking to others from this area are also pleased with their results.  Remember, if Dr. Panet says you need to keep coming back, then do so as eventually you will be back to your old self before the injury and that is the result I wanted.  In the mean time I have still been working and hardly missed any work.  I tell everyone I want to retire standing straight up and pain free.  Thanks to Dr. Panet I will be doing so. 

 J. G.

 Genelle, B.C

I have had lower back pain for over 20 years. I had run the gauntlet of massage therapy, acupuncture, physiotherapy as well as a chiropractor. Everything would help for short periods of time but there was no prolonged relief to be had. When my current physiotherapist suggested I try Prolotherapy I was totally freaked out by the idea of a needle being injected into my already sore back. Since I live in an area that supports my life style of running, skiing, hiking and biking, I decided to take the plunge……….no pun intended. The first session was painful and I wondered if I had done the right thing. A year later, many sessions later, I am totally pain free and am having an active life. Thank you Dr. Panet for giving me back my life. I am so grateful! I sing your praises to everyone I know that suffers from chronic pain.

With much love and appreciation,

L.B.

December 2010

I was referred to Dr. Panet, a rare find with his treatments I know I won't be needing a hip replacement which was inevitable with the damage. When i told my family doctor that I would not be having a hip replacement or taking any medication and would be going for Prolotherapy he said he had heard good things about it. I no longer have a fear of needles. Dr. Panet is very gentle and before you know it it's done and then my body takes over and heals and strengthens to support my hip. Dr. Panet has a wealth of knowledge and experience in this procedure. I always have one of his cards on me to let people I know or meet with problems that can benefit from Prolotherapy. I feel truly blessed to have met Dr. Panet.

 J. S.

 Vancouver, BC

 December 2010

Hi Dr. Panet:
I hope you had a good summer.
 

I just wanted you to know that both my wife and I both finished the Ironman Canada triathlon in Penticton at the end of August.  I had absolutely no pain whatsoever in my SI joint, and, other than some hamstring cramping, had no problems whatsoever. My goal was to finish inside the 17-hour cutoff and, as you can see from the attached finisher's photo, did much better than I'd hoped for.
 

Thanks again for all your help!

Regards,

B.B.                                                                                                                                  

I have had chronic muscular back pain for years.  It got to the point where I was unable to sit at a desk or drive for any extended period of time.  Not to mention the foul mood that chronic pain puts you in!  I saw physiotherapists, message therapists, and even tried ART.  Nothing helped.  Only once I saw Dr. Panet and he introduced me to prolotherapy did my pain go away.  After a few sessions the knots in my back were all but gone, and so was the pain.  Thank you Dr. Panet!

J.N.

.

2011 Page 1 Page 2  Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8