Stem Cell Therapy

Many adults live with chronic pain, thinking that relief only lies in invasive treatments like surgery or spinal injections. This doesn’t have to be the case, especially if you live in New York. Stem cell therapy is a quickly evolving field that provides a more natural, less invasive treatment for conditions like pinched nerves, spinal disc pain, and other injuries. The use of platelet lysate and platelet rich plasma therapy could make stem cell therapy even more effective and safe.

The future is happening now in your NYC pain management doctor’s office. Platelet lysate has extraordinary potential for healing your body naturally. The therapy provides another alternative for treating pain and injury. With time, research, and clinical trials, this new treatment option could forever change how diseases are treated.

To provide a brief overview of the progress made in pain reduction, consider this: The cells that are used to regenerate and restore damaged tissue are called mesenchymal stem cells or MSCs. They’re found in your bone marrow, but in very low concentrations, compared to other cells. For these cells to provide a noticeable effect in areas where you’re injured or hurting, you need a much larger concentration.

Welcomed Changes

After these stem cells are extracted from your bone marrow, they’re often cultured outside your body using additives that help them multiply. In this stronger concentration, your NYC pain management specialist or experienced physician injects these cells into your body where you have diseased or damaged tissue.

But the additive used to help multiply these cells is foreign to humans. It’s effective enough and relatively safe — meaning an allergic reaction is the worst you can expect. But since it’s still a foreign substance, and isn’t as effective as human MSCs.

Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy to the Rescue

Enter platelet rich plasma therapy. This medical technology has been emerging as an alternative for cultured MSCs. Platelets are the cells in your blood that are necessary for clotting. When you cut yourself, the platelets in your blood clump together to form a clot and stop the bleeding.

Platelets are rich in growth factors, the proteins that promote growth and healing. So, combining the reconstructive properties of MSCs with the healing properties of platelets vastly increases the chances of successful repair and regeneration of your tissues. When this mixture is injected directly in an area that’s causing you pain, the cells combine to work wonders.

Getting to Platelet Lysate

Whether you’re getting MSCs or platelet therapy to help heal tissue damage, the crucial metric is the growth factors available. Until recently, whole platelets were used to bombard your damaged area. These platelet rich plasma (PRP) procedures provided some healing, but researchers found that by carefully breaking the platelets — or lysing them — they released the growth factors and provided an enhanced effect. Since then, platelet lysate therapy has replaced PRP in many cases.

This minimally invasive therapy has found some success, especially in treating bone damage and spinal conditions. Even though research is still ongoing, many patients have found that platelet lysate therapy does much more than just alleviate pain. Results show that their bodies actually heal — naturally — using cells from their bodies. And the healing happens much quicker.