Do you believe this injection works?
If so, why?
I genuinely want to know why anyone would do this procedure because I've yet to hear any mechanism of action supporting it.
Olfactory dysfunction, including anosmia and hyposmia is difficult to treat. Although the mechanism is not well known, stellate ganglion block (SGB) is used to treat olfactory dysfunction. There are no prior studies on the long-term effects of SGB on ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Old school stuff but it has shown efficacy preCOVID for this.
The hand waving in the article is:
"The central nervous system (CNS) of the adult mammalian brain is a non-renewable organ. However, Kaplan and Hinds [
15] reported that the olfactory bulb and the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus have the ability to regenerate. Adult neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb is regulated by a specialized microenvironment as well as various factors [
16,
17]. Among them, intrinsic factors include activator protein 1 (AP-1), Aristaless-related homeobox-homeodomain transcription factor (Arx), Achaete-scute complex-like 1 (ASCL 1) and so on, and the extrinsic factors include neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, γ-amino butyric acid (GABA), glutamate, nitric oxide (NO), opioids, cannabinoids, trophic factors, and hormones, such as prolactin, thyroid hormones, neurosteroids, and neuropeptides [
16]. Age, odor, sexual signal, stress, and stroke affect neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb [
18-
21]. In addition, vasculature is closely associated with the migration of newborn cells [
22]. Lee et al. [
23] showed that superior cervical ganglionectomy enhances regeneration of olfactory receptor cells in mice anosmia induced by zinc sulphate. Therefore, we suggest that the effect of SGB on olfactory dysfunction may be related to an increased blood flow by the sympathetic block. The effects of SGB on blood flow occur no more than 2 h after SGB [
24]. However, the improvement of olfactory function after SGB lasts for a long time as demonstrated in this study. We propose that this is related to neurogenesis in the olfactory nerve under the stimulus of increased blood flow."