The Fitness Adviser

The following information comes after hours upon hours of research, personal experience, and discussions with various medical professionals. If you’ve ever had or have a bad injury, or want to heal a small pain before it gets worse, then I’d say that this post is worth its weight in silver gold.

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With the advent of biotechnology, surgery is on its way to becoming history.  For years, biotechnology has been at the forefront of saving lives and increasing quality of life by virtue of its huge advancements in the agriculture industry. These advancements have helped feed hundreds of millions of people around the world. Now the field of biotech is moving not just towards saving lives, but improving them!

How? One of my favorite new medical treatments is something called prolotherapy. Prolotherapy works by injecting your injured tendon or ligament with a solution (using dextrose or sugar water) that temporarily injures the tendon or ligament, causing your body to respond with an inflammatory process and actually begin healing. Prolotherapy has historical documentation going as far back as Hippocrates. Hippocrates would needle the area surrounding the dislocated shoulders of injured javelin throwers, and seemingly miraculously, the shoulders would heal themselves.

When I had a severe case of Jumpers Knee in both knees, prolotherapy was the only thing that finally got me back on the healing track. I was also probably the first person in Israel and the entire Middle East to get prolotherapy shots to the knees! Anyway, back on topic…

Most tendon or ligament injuries get bad because of the lack of blood flow to those areas, and that’s why they’re not able to heal. The shots work so well because they get the body to respond to the injured area with a healing process, and your body will eventually heal itself and create real collagen. Pretty amazing stuff! The best part is that the solution that is used for the shots is dirt cheap, and you can save thousands of dollars compared to surgery.

This is where biotech comes in. A new treatment, which combines the age-old effectiveness of prolotherapy with new scientific advancements, looks extremely promising.

This new treatment is called Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy, and is taking the medical community by storm. Platelet Rich Plasma Therapy is a new treatment that utilizes your own blood to promote healing in the injured tendon or ligament. It works by placing your blood in a centrifuge (a filter) and spinning it at a high enough speed to separate the red blood cells from platelets, which are a key ingredient in the body’s healing. They then inject a high concentration of these platelets into the damaged area, which then promotes healing.

There are a lot of reasons that platelet therapy is really catching on. For one, if it proves to be as effective as doctors believe it will be, then it will work as a replacement for surgery.  That doesn’t explain why platelet therapy is catching on faster than prolotherapy, which has also been shown to replace the need for surgery.

I have heard some people say cynically that the reason these treatments aren’t catching on faster is because surgeons don’t want to give up the money they make off of surgery. They claim that platelet therapy is catching on faster than prolotherapy because at the very least, there’s money to be involved in selling the centrifuge kit that separates the blood from the platelet. Therefore,  biotech companies are paying and fueling research into the subject. It’s definitely possible, but either way both prolotherapy and platelet therapy look extremely promising. Doctors also have the idea of doing prolotherapy or platelet therapy before an injury gets bad (when you first have pain), so you can get back on your feet faster than ever. These kind of therapies are definitely getting interesting.

Since I’m still recovering from my own knee injury, I’m going to get assessed to see whether or not platelet therapy is a good option for me, and if I do it, I will definitely tell you how it went and what it was like. It’s also important to remember that even with these special injections, you have to continue doing the physical therapy after to get the maximum effect!

Here are some videos talking about prolotherapy and platelet therapy.

First prolotherapy.

And here’s a video on platelet therapy.

A toast to medical advancements that will improve our lives!!

-Rafi

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Injuries by Rafi