Your body already has some remarkable self-healing mechanisms. You may not think much about it when you have a small cut. You simply count on your body to do what’s necessary to repair the damage underneath the adhesive bandage you apply. Your body actively works to fix other types of injury and deterioration throughout your body.
However, there are times when these repair efforts can’t keep up with the rate of degeneration.
Regenerative medicine is one of the most exciting developing fields in healthcare today. Instead of a physician healing your injuries, we assist the body’s repair mechanisms to work more efficiently and effectively. Stem cells have been in the news, sometimes controversially, for some time now.
As contemporary medicine has learned more about these powerful resources, the use of stem cells has expanded to offer hope for many conditions once thought to be untreatable.
When you think of the earliest stages of a person’s life, a baby exists not as a girl or boy yet, but as an embryo. As they develop, groups of cells mature into the tissue that defines biological gender. Embryonic stem cells have the amazing capability of dividing into more stem cells, and later these can transform into any of the types of cells needed to make up the body.
Stem cells exist in adults, too, though in smaller numbers and with limited abilities compared with those of an embryo. However, researchers are delving ever deeper to explore the capabilities of these cells, as well as ways of genetically reprogramming normal cells to behave like stem cells of different types. Research and study are ongoing in pursuing techniques and applications.
Most people have heard of bone marrow transplants, a procedure that’s been used for decades, but many don’t know that this is, essentially, a stem cell treatment. Bone marrow stem cells replace and repopulate those damaged by disease or chemotherapy.
Degenerative diseases or soft tissue injuries can also respond to injections of stem cells. Since the existing stem cells in your body are limited, the body’s ability to counter the deterioration from osteoarthritis, for example, may not be able to keep up with the level of decline occurring in your joints. Adding more stem cells gives your repair systems extra raw materials to use to repair those deteriorating joints.
Westside Pain Specialists offers several treatments that use or support stem cell therapy to repair damage and relieve pain.
Using stem cells derived from donated amniotic fluid, the fluid in which a developing fetus grows, we can treat a variety of orthopedic and soft tissue injuries. Some of the common conditions treated with amniotic regenerative stem cell therapy include:
Bone marrow stem cells harvested from your own body can also be used to treat many of these same conditions. In addition to stem cell therapy, platelet-rich plasma therapy may be used to add growth factors to a treatment area, further supplementing your body’s natural repair abilities.
If you’re dealing with chronic pain, make an appointment with Westside Pain Specialists for an exam and evaluation. We can determine if you’re a good candidate for stem cell treatment.
