How Do Stem Cells Reduce Pain? 

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Pain management is one of the most common reasons that patients go to the doctor. However, treatment is often a difficult task. What makes pain so hard to treat is that it has many causes. Each person experiences pain differently. What feels like a minor ache to one person could be debilitating to another.

How Traditional Medicine Addresses Pain

For doctors, trying to treat a patient’s chronic pain can feel like throwing darts at a dartboard. While they make every effort to discover the source of the pain, many times, there doesn’t seem to be an underlying issue. Even when they do know what’s causing the problem, it can be hard to target treatment effectively.

Some doctors tell patients to rest, while others focus on physical therapy. Still others prefer to rely on pain medication as a first step. Ultimately, some patients may opt for surgery to try to relieve their pain. While these approaches to pain management can help, they often provide only temporary relief, leaving sufferers to look for longer-lasting alternatives. One increasingly popular option for pain is stem cell treatment.

Using Stem Cell Therapy to Treat Pain

Stem cells are cells that have the ability to “differentiate,” or turn into other cell types, including muscle, bone, and other kinds of tissue. These cells, also known as mesenchymal stem cells, may be harvested from the patient directly (adipose or bone marrow) or from donated umbilical cord tissue (Wharton’s Jelly). They are then administered to the body at the site of the pain.

This flexibility offers doctors the potential to treat pain in several ways, including the option to help the body to heal itself by regenerating damaged tissues. There are a number of conditions that might benefit from this regenerative property, including:

  • Degenerative disc disorder
  • Spinal stenosis
  • Athletic injuries
  • Osteoarthritis

Stem cells also have some unique effects, including the ability to reduce inflammation in tissues and to assist in controlling autoimmune responses, especially those responsible for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. These conditions, which are often characterized by debilitating pain, may respond very well to stem cell treatment, allowing patients to regain their quality of life.

While studies continue to explore the ways that stem cells can help patients to manage their chronic pain, so far, results have shown that these treatments have the potential to provide relief for a number of conditions.

This post was written by a medical professional at Stemedix Inc. At Stemedix we provide access to Regenerative Medicine for ALS, also known as Stem cell treatment for ALS. Regenerative medicine has the natural potential to help improve symptoms sometimes lost from the progression of many conditions.

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