You’ve likely heard of regenerative medicine before, but do you know what it is and how it functions?
Regenerative medicine is an evolving field of medicine that creates alternative methods of dealing with ailments and illnesses. What makes it stand out is that it promotes natural healing rather than using created solutions like drugs and highly invasive surgeries.
Several regenerative options are currently available to provide relief in a gentle, non-invasive way. These vary in how they work and what they help with, but the underlying theme is taking advantage of the body’s natural healing process.
We’ll explain a little more about regenerative medicine below and how it may be a good solution for you.
What Is Regenerative Medicine?
First, you need to know what regenerative medicine is to understand how it works.
Its exact definition can be translated as the engineering and replacement of human cells. This is done with the intention of healing and restoring function to damaged body tissue.
Regenerative medicine is a solution for treatment that can relieve your pain, make you feel more capable, and ultimately heal your injuries. Better yet, it does not require invasive surgeries and is an extremely natural form of healing.
What Current Regenerative Options Are Available?
The field is still expanding, but four common treatments include the use of stem cells, platelet-rich plasma, lipogems, and prolotherapy.
All of them have the same focus on stimulating tissue repair, but their exact uses and location of implementation differ. The underlying theme is keeping treatment as natural as possible and taking advantage of the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself.
Stem cells are extremely powerful cells that can transform into other cells. You can take them from healthy parts of the body and transplant them into damaged areas to stimulate healing.
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is found in your blood and is effective for healing wounds and clotting. PRP will be drawn from your bloodstream and injected into defective tissue to jump-start the healing process.
Lipogems are quite an interesting treatment option because they use your body’s fat stores to heal. Stem cells are often contained in a lipogem treatment, but they are also paired with other useful cells in fat that will reconstruct cells in a problem area.
Prolotherapy is similar in theory to a PRP injection or the use of stem cells, but it instead uses a non-harmful irritant injected directly to damaged tissue. This irritant will then signal the body to begin healing the non-working tissues.
How Does Regenerative Medicine Relate to Natural Healing?
Knowing how the four main therapies work, it becomes much simpler to explain how they relate to natural healing. All of them do not use a foreign agent to cause healing. Instead, they use what the body can already do well.
Stem cells, platelet-rich plasma, and lipogems all transport useful cells from a healthy part of the body to a damaged part. These all take advantage of existing healing properties found within your body to stimulate regrowth in areas that need it.
While prolotherapy does not transport cells, it does involve an irritant that causes the body to heal itself. The injection given does not heal your body, but it sends a gentle reminder that a certain area of your body needs to be fixed.
The greatest part about regenerative medicine is that it understands the concept that the human body is its own best tool for restoring health and function. Modern medicines and surgeries are also effective, but they are not natural methods.
Is Regenerative Medicine Effective?
The biggest question surrounding regenerative medicine is whether or not it is effective. This is what you care about most, figuring out if a treatment will provide you with the relief you seek so badly.
An easy and short answer to this question is yes, but there is currently not enough evidence to fully support regenerative medicine due to how new it is.
Not all cell therapies are necessarily effective, but those that do work tend to produce amazing results and relief for patients.
Anytime a field has a lack of research, it becomes difficult to understand what exactly is causing positive results. What is understood is that it restores function, reduces pain, and improves the quality of life for patients that receive the right form of regenerative treatment.
Risks relating to regenerative medicine are fairly low, but the potential rewards are often well worth it.
Closing Thoughts
The field of regenerative medicine is still very young, but it has produced very promising results thus far.
Regenerative medicine harnesses the body’s own ability to heal, usually transporting powerful cells from one portion of the body to another to stimulate healing.
Four of the most common treatments include the use of stem cells, platelet-rich plasma, lipogems, and prolotherapy.
These treatments all use the body’s restorative capabilities to regain function without needing major surgery or the use of non-natural medicine.
Regenerative medicine is not always effective, but further research will sharpen its focus and lead to far more precise solutions in the future. For now, the right treatment will provide pain relief and restore functionality to several sensitive areas in the body.
