Regenerative medicine options like stem cell treatments are growing in popularity both because of their potential effectiveness and because they can help you avoid invasive procedures like surgeries. Stem cell therapies focus on helping your body improve what it already does naturally — heal injuries.
Stem cells are the cells from which all differentiated cells form. They can come from your bone marrow or fat, with some people also turning to umbilical cord stem cells for treatment. But how do you know if you could benefit from stem cell therapy?
Those With Sports Injuries
If you play sports, you know that injuries can occur at any moment. You can twist your body in an unnatural way or suffer an impact that damages joints or ligaments. Minor injuries usually benefit from ice packs and rest, but healing can take time.
Healing is also a delicate process that can be disrupted. If that occurs, the injury might not heal completely and could lead to chronic issues that impact your mobility and even cause lasting pain.
When you turn to stem cell therapies, you can speed up the healing process. This type of regenerative medicine helps reduce inflammation, making it easier for nutrients and oxygen to get to the site of the injury.
Increased oxygen and nutrients are particularly important when dealing with ligaments and cartilage, which naturally don’t receive much blood flow.
Those With Arthritis
Arthritis is a debilitating condition in which your joints’ cartilage starts to deteriorate. The cartilage is what cushions your joints, preventing the bones from rubbing against one another. Once the cartilage breaks down, you can experience pain, stiffness, and mobility issues. In some cases, it can even cause joint deformity.
Stem cells, especially mesenchymal stem cells, release anti-inflammatory factors that help with pain and encourage your body to heal the damaged areas. Stem cells injected into the affected joint can reduce swelling, helping reduce pain and also restoring some mobility to stiff joints.
One of the best things about stem cell therapies for arthritis is that this kind of treatment is minimally invasive.
Those With Spinal Cord Injuries
Spinal cord injuries may severely impact your quality of life. You may struggle to perform everyday tasks and could face mobility issues that leave you dependent on others.
Spinal cord injuries are particularly difficult to treat because healing tends to plateau as a result of microenvironmental changes like inflammation, glial scar formation, and more. Stem cells can help because of their power to reduce inflammation, allowing the healing process to continue.
Ongoing treatment with stem cells could offer an improvement in mobility and a reduction in pain levels.
Those With Traumatic Injuries
After a major injury, like one that results from a car accident, healing can seem impossible. You may experience significant pain and could be dealing with mobility concerns that require physical therapy and even surgery.
Stem cell therapy works well in conjunction with physical therapy and other treatments because it utilizes cells from your body gathered in a minimally invasive way. You can continue other therapeutic programs while giving your body the chance to reduce inflammation so that blood can reach the injury site.
A better level of blood flow to the area not only brings nutrients and oxygen but also helps flush out toxins at the injury site that could make the symptoms worse.
Those Who’ve Gone Through Surgery
Going through surgery can put a lot of strain on your body. That is one of the reasons why the recovery process is often so long. If you’ve been through a surgical procedure, consider stem cell therapy.
Stem cell therapy can help reduce the recovery time so that you can start feeling more like yourself again. Inflammation is a huge concern. Think of the kinds of bruising you may have after a surgical procedure. Although stem cell therapy can’t prevent all inflammation and bruising, its use after surgery can reduce how much you experience.
If there’s less inflammation, the area can receive more nutrients and experience faster healing.
Those Who Need Joint Replacements
Replacing a joint is a surgical procedure that requires the implantation of an artificial joint and the removal of the damaged one. The recovery process for this type of procedure tends to be difficult, with many people experiencing mobility issues even as they heal because the artificial part hasn’t really integrated into the rest of the tissue.
If this type of surgery is something that you have to go through, adding stem cell therapy to the recovery process makes a difference. Stem cell therapies encourage the growth of new tissues around the artificial replacement that can make mobility easier and decrease pain, helping you get back to your life more rapidly.
Those With Degenerative Diseases
Degenerative diseases are chronic conditions that progressively get worse. They include diseases like:
- Multiple sclerosis
- Arthritis
- Parkinson’s disease
- Dementia
- Degenerative disc disease
For these conditions, a combination of treatments is usually most effective. They can include medications, physical therapy, and even surgery. By also turning to stem cell therapy, you have the chance to tackle the underlying cause of the problem so that you can get relief from symptoms.
Stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease, for example, focuses on helping restore the failing neurons that are in charge of producing dopamine. This could help with the management of dopamine levels and could even restore some function. In many instances, stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s can even slow down the disease.
Is Stem Cell Therapy Right for You?
Stem cell therapy might be able to offer the help you need with managing degenerative conditions, healing injuries, and providing pain relief that doesn’t rely on narcotics. You don’t have to worry about suffering allergic reactions or rejections because stem cell therapies usually rely on cells from your body.
If you’re considering stem cell treatments or want to know more about what the process involves and what you can expect, talk with a regenerative medicine specialist about the options available.
St. Petersburg, Florida
