If you’ve been dealing with chronic joint pain, back pain, or a soft tissue injury, there’s a good chance you’ve either had a cortisone injection or been told one is your next step. Cortisone shots are one of the most commonly performed pain procedures in the country. They’re fast, familiar, and covered by most insurance plans.
They also don’t heal anything.
That’s not a criticism of every physician who administers them — for certain acute situations, cortisone has genuine utility. But for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain who have been cycling through steroid injections every few months without lasting improvement, it’s worth understanding exactly what cortisone does and doesn’t do — and how Prolozone® Therapy works differently.
Cortisone is a corticosteroid — a powerful anti-inflammatory medication. When injected into a joint, tendon, or spinal structure, it suppresses the local inflammatory response. This can provide significant, sometimes dramatic, pain relief within days. For many patients, that relief is a genuine quality-of-life improvement.
The problem is what cortisone doesn’t do. It does not repair damaged cartilage. It does not heal torn ligaments or tendons. It does not restore disc integrity. It does not address the structural reason you’re in pain. The inflammation is suppressed — the underlying damage remains.
As the cortisone wears off, typically within four to twelve weeks, inflammation returns to the damaged tissue, and pain comes back with it. The cycle repeats. And here’s where it becomes a real problem: repeated cortisone injections are not benign. Multiple studies have documented that frequent steroid injections can accelerate cartilage breakdown, weaken tendons, and actually worsen the structural integrity of the joint over time. The treatment designed to help can, with repeated use, contribute to the very damage causing the pain.
Prolozone® Therapy was developed by Dr. Frank Shallenberger, MD — a physician who trained extensively in ozone medicine and recognized that many chronic pain conditions share a common underlying problem: damaged tissue that lacks sufficient oxygen and circulation to complete healing.
The Prolozone® injection delivers two things simultaneously: an anti-inflammatory nutrient formula that addresses immediate irritation, and medical-grade ozone (O3) that dramatically increases oxygen utilization at the cellular level in the treated tissue. This combination doesn’t just suppress inflammation — it provides the damaged tissue with the raw materials it needs to actually repair.
As oxygen delivery improves and inflammation resolves, the body’s own fibroblasts and chondroblasts — the cells responsible for rebuilding connective tissue and cartilage — activate and begin structural repair. Over a series of sessions, patients typically experience progressive, cumulative improvement rather than the temporary relief and return of symptoms that characterize cortisone.
To be fair, cortisone has its place. For acute injuries — a sudden, severe flare of bursitis, for example, or a short-term inflammatory spike following an acute strain — a single cortisone injection can provide meaningful relief, allowing a patient to function and begin rehabilitation. The issue isn’t cortisone itself; it’s using it repeatedly as a long-term management strategy for conditions rooted in structural damage.
If you’ve had more than two or three cortisone injections for the same condition and continue to experience pain, your body is telling you the inflammation keeps returning because the underlying damage hasn’t resolved. That’s precisely the scenario where Prolozone® Therapy tends to produce its most meaningful results.
Dr. Steven Wiener is board-certified in both Pain Management and Anesthesiology and trained in Advanced Prolozone® Therapy directly under Dr. Frank Shallenberger, MD. He evaluates every patient thoroughly before recommending any treatment, and he’ll tell you honestly whether Prolozone® is the right fit for your specific condition or whether another approach makes more sense.
His practice is located at 359 Enterprise Ct in Bloomfield Hills, MI, serving patients throughout Oakland County, including Troy, West Bloomfield, Rochester Hills, Farmington Hills, and Birmingham.
If you’ve been managing pain with cortisone shots and are ready to explore an option that addresses the cause rather than the symptom, call (248) 291-7223 to schedule a consultation.
