Stem cell therapy is quickly gaining popularity as a promising form of therapy to treat various injuries and diseases. Many people who have suffered from debilitating, painful conditions have experienced incredible results after being treated with stem cells. Here at Right Path Pain & Spine Center in Davenport, FL, we offer stem cell therapy for pain in an outpatient setting with a targeted, personalized approach, so you can get the pain relief you need.
How Long Will Results Last After Treatment?
When pain reductions are gained from this treatment, they often last for a very long time, and in some cases, stem cell therapy for pain can lead to permanent improvements. This, of course, depends upon many different factors, such as what condition is being treated, how severe it is, how many treatments are performed, and a person’s overall health.
After therapy, most patients continue to see improvements for up to one year, and it’s not uncommon to see many still experiencing these improvements during follow-ups several years later. In addition to pain reduction, the improvements gained from stem cell therapy often lead to greater mobility and function, as well as a higher quality of life.
How Does Stem Cell Therapy for Pain Work?
During stem cell therapy, there’s a wide array of mechanisms and beneficial effects that are happening within your body to help reduce pain and repair injuries. To further break this down and simplify the process, here are the following three things that are happening in the body after a stem cell infusion:
1. Identifying and Targeting Dysfunction
When stem cells are injected near an injured area of the body, they naturally home in on inflammation and damaged tissue. Keep in mind that the body is a highly organized system where cells communicate with each other. So when tissue is damaged, it emits chemicals that stem cells can then detect. These stem cells then begin to migrate towards the damaged tissue, and they do this by traveling through the bloodstream and lymphatic system.
2. Grafting to Damaged Cells
Once they arrive at the site of injury or dysfunction, stem cells attach themselves to the damaged cells of tissue, bone, and cartilage in a process called grafting. After they’re attached, they begin to release hundreds of different chemicals that signal to the brain and body that healing should then take place at this specific site where damage has occurred.
This is where the real magic with stem cell therapy takes place. It’s this process, known as licensing, that then kickstarts the immune system into releasing many of its own proteins and anti-inflammatory mediators that work to repair, regenerate, and protect damaged or inflamed tissue and joints.
3. Pain Reduction
Once stem cells have signaled to the immune system that healing should occur, inflammation in the area normally reduces, and this can then often lead to quick and noticeable reductions in pain in many inflammatory conditions. The original stem cells then break away and disappear while the body continues to produce more cells to heal the damaged tissue, cartilage, and joints.
As the regenerative process continues to take place throughout the first year after treatment, it can lead to gradual, yet remarkable improvements in mobility and reduced pain. This means that stem cell therapy for pain reduction is often long-lasting because your body is naturally repairing the damage instead of simply masking it in the way that pain medications often do.
What Type of Stem Cells Do You Use?
Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Mesenchymal stem cells, or MSCs, are the most commonly used type of stem cells in regenerative medicine because they can be derived from your own body in a safe and quick manner, and they, therefore, do not pose the same ethical issues that embryonic stem cells do. In addition to this, stem cell therapy that uses mesenchymal stem cells offers many physical benefits for use in chronic pain conditions.
Mesenchymal stem cells can be extracted from almost anywhere in a person’s body, though some areas, such as blood, bone marrow, and adipose tissue, are easier to obtain them from. These stem cells are ideal for use in regenerative medicine because it’s easy to procure them from your body in a quick, non-invasive way. They also offer amazing benefits over other types of stem cells because of their versatile nature and ability to target precise locations where healing and tissue regeneration needs to occur.
Benefits of Therapy Using Mesenchymal Stem Cells
Stem cell therapy that uses MSCs can be a very promising alternative treatment for many conditions. The benefits and reasons to choose this therapy over others include:
Ability to Migrate Towards Injuries
These specific stem cells can detect and migrate to the areas where injury, imbalances, or dysfunction has occurred. They do this by sensing pro-inflammatory chemicals and other agents that are released in the body by inflamed tissues. This means that stem cell therapy acts as a naturally-targeted approach to identify damage where many of today’s most cutting-edge medical equipment and surgical tools simply can’t compare.
Self-Regenerating Capabilities
Another amazing ability that MSCs have is their self-renewing characteristic, which plays a key role in the process of regenerating new tissue. Although these stem cells normally disappear after attaching themselves to injured tissue, the mediating chemicals they release are then able to create new stem cells in their place and this process can continue to happen as a cycle over time. This means that they can replenish themselves and multiply overtime to accelerate tissue repair.
A One-Size-Fits-All Solution
MSCs are also well-known for their ability to differentiate themselves into other types of cells. This means that stem cells taken from deep tissue areas of the body can create stem cells in more superficial areas, such as the upper layers of skin. This makes stem cell therapy a truly versatile and unique method of treating many conditions. To simplify this process, think of it as your body producing its own natural medication for self-healing, which can then be applied to any other part of the body, regardless of which location it was procured from.
Readily Accepted by the Body
One major obstacle that has been a problem during transplant surgeries, as well as in regenerative medicine, is the body’s rejection of foreign objects and organisms. This form of therapy avoids this obstacle because stem cells come from your body. Therefore, the body doesn’t recognize them as foreign invaders and readily accepts them in most cases. This allows the stem cells to travel through the body unobstructed so that they can get to the site of injury and do their job at initiating the healing and repair process.
Where Do the Stem Cells Come From?
While stem cells can come from almost every part of your body, they are most commonly collected from three places: blood, bone marrow, and adipose tissue. This is because these are the three easiest sites for the cells to be extracted from. Where stem cells are extracted from really depends on what condition is being treated. In most cases, we can extract stem cells by drawing your blood, then harvesting the stem cells from the collected blood before replacing the blood back into your body.
To treat some conditions, we may use other non-invasive methods to harvest stem cells from adipose tissue, often from your hip or from another area where there is excess fatty tissue. For bone marrow extractions, a quick needle and syringe insertion is made to extract a very small amount of marrow so that stem cells can be collected from it. Regardless of which method we use, all are considered safe and your body will naturally regenerate any extracted stem cells within a few days.
What Conditions Might Benefit from Therapy?
While stem cell therapy is still in its early stages as a therapeutic treatment, it has shown favorable results in reducing pain associated with the following conditions and more:
- Osteoarthritis
- Musculoskeletal disorders
- Sport injuries
- Neurological disorders
- Diabetes
- Bone diseases
- Cartilage degeneration
- Cardiovascular diseases
- Nervous system diseases
- Inflammatory skin conditions
- Non-healing bone fractures
- Degenerative disc disease
It’s Time to Enjoy Life Again
If you’re suffering from pain, loss of mobility or any other symptoms of a disease or disorder that is either new or hasn’t responded to traditional treatments, stem cell therapy for pain may be just the solution you’ve been looking for. To see if this treatment is right for you and to schedule a consultation, contact us today at Right Path Pain & Spine Center in Davenport, FL. We’re here to answer all your questions and to ensure that you receive the most optimal treatment so that you can get back to pain-free living again.
