Scarring body tissue can actually heal injuries

If you can, imagine a hot needle going into a sore muscle that's been damaged by athletic stress. Hippocrates used this procedure to treat shoulder pain of discus athletes in the fifth century; it's called prolotherapy. Today, the idea is the same but the methods are slightly different.

Prolotherapy is controversial because modern doctors use needles to inject a sugar solution into damaged muscles. This causes inflammation, much like you'd expect. However, that's exactly its purpose: the body's response to this irritation is to send nutrients to the spot of pain as fast as possible. This literally causes scarring to the already pained muscles and ligaments.

But wait, isn't scarring a bad thing? Not in this case. The scarring causes the body to repair the muscle by laying down new tissue. This procedure theoretically fixes the problem and the pain. But not everyone is convinced. Prolotherapy is still up in the air because not all research backs its effectiveness. You'd think that if the Father of Modern Medicine endorsed it, other practitioners would too! It is, after all, a natural response and healing process -- but hopefully they'll come up with a solid verdict that everyone can agree on.