When you suffer from chronic pain, it can feel like you have no options for relief. Unfortunately, chronic pain conditions affect up to 20% of American adults and often lead to poor mobility, opioid dependency, and a poor quality of life.
Regenerative medicine offers a new option in pain management, allowing some patients to find relief without relying on prescription medications that only mask symptoms instead of treating the source of the pain.
What Is Regenerative Medicine?
Regenerative medicine focuses on developing and using treatments to heal diseased or damaged tissues and organs and restore function. The two types of regenerative medicine that offer the most promise for sufferers of chronic pain conditions are stem cell therapy and platelet-rich plasma (PRP).
Stem cells serve as the starting point of specialized cells. When they divide, they can differentiate into specialized cells, like blood or brain cells. A medical provider can extract stem cells from your body, either from the bone marrow or adipose tissues. The stem cells are then processed and administered into targeted areas so they can potentially rebuild damaged tissue and heal.
PRP uses the healing and growth factors of the blood’s platelets. These components of the blood support cell regeneration and repair. Your physician will draw your blood. Then, using a centrifuge, they’ll spin your blood sample, separating the platelets and plasma from the red and white blood cells, then administer the PRP into the treatment area to initiate the healing and pain management process naturally.
What Pain Conditions Can Regenerative Medicine Treat?
Regenerative medicine treatments are incredibly versatile, and the healing potential of this approach has shown effectiveness for a wide range of conditions. It is especially promising for treating those with chronic musculoskeletal pain conditions, particularly joint and back pain.
Joint Pain
Over time, most people will develop some type of joint pain. The joints endure extreme pressure while supporting your body through everyday life. According to the Arthritis Foundation, 92.1 million adults have been diagnosed with arthritis or report arthritis symptoms.
PRP and stem cell therapy therapies have shown to be well tolerated, effective, and safe treatment options for alleviating joint pain, especially pain stemming from osteoarthritis.
Back Pain
The CDC reports that lower back pain causes more disability worldwide than any other condition. Developing clinical evidence shows that stem cell therapy and PRP therapies may effectively manage back pain stemming from various conditions, including discogenic lower back pain, facet joint pain, and sacroiliac joint pain.
As researchers continue to discover the capabilities of regenerative medicine, chronic pain patients are already finding relief through treatments capable of alleviating their musculoskeletal pain.
This post was written by a medical professional at Stemedix Inc. At Stemedix we provide access to Regenerative Medicine. Regenerative medicine has the natural potential to help improve symptoms sometimes lost from the progression of many conditions.