ENHANCING YOUR BODY'S HEALING PROCESS with Stem Cell Injections
Dr. Blake Johnson - CDI Medical Lead, Regenerative Medicine
I was a runner. But my knee generation got to the point where walking to see a patient hurt and one day I literally asked one of my colleagues to put some steroids in local anaesthetic in my knees so I could continue my clinic. And that lasted me for about three months, provided really really good relief but the pain recurred at the end of the summer and I decided I was going to try something else. And I did some research and decided to try a stem cell injection. I had that done two and a half years ago. I'm pain free today and that's what really inspired me to offer to my patients.
Harnessing the power of Stem Cells
So, what stem cells do is they have a couple of properties; one is the ability to renew themselves. They can regenerate and create new stem cells. And the second property is that they are pleura potential. Which means they can differentiate into other cell types. Stem cells are present in high concentrations in the bone marrow and lesser concentrations in other tissue, like liver, skin, muscle and they are deployed when we get injured or when degeneration takes place to the site of injury. And then they interact with the ambient cells, which are the cells that are. They're exchanging proteins and RNA that induces those stem cells to become the type of cell in that environment that helps the regeneration process
Harvesting your Stem Cells
We have very gentle procedure for doing that. We obtain the bone marrow, we filter it and then put it through a centrifuge process that isolates the stem cells. And they would be injected into the joint or disc, for the stem cells. Their main function is to repair the joint or the tendon or the ligament that has been injured.
Is a Stem Cell Injection Right for Me?
We use them for ligament injuries. Tendon injuries. Any kind of joint degeneration or injury as long as it's not completely degenerated and there's a chance for the repair of the cartilage and other tissues that are in the joint. We are using it for in the spine, in the discs, intervertebral discs, for disc degeneration and in the sacroiliac and facet joints in the spine and pelvis. A good Candidate would have to have degeneration that can be isolated to that specific joint or tendon and would have to have enough tissue there to work with. There is no magic bullet, but this is another option that we can offer that even from personal experience I can tell you I think this is revolutionary.