Hippocrates was quoted as saying: “Natural forces within us are the true healers.”
Looking back many millenia, his words still ring true. And what if we could help stimulate those natural forces to produce even greater healing?
If we’ve caught your attention, then welcome to the wonderful world of regenerative medicine. We find ourselves in an era of significant medical progress.
Imagine for a second the potential to heal tissues which have been severely damaged by disease, trauma, and age. Or better yet, patients with chronic conditions finding hope for potential recovery.
Regenerative medicine is quickly pushing the boundaries on what we thought possible, bringing together the brightest minds from a wide range of fields, to answer one question: “how can we improve the body’s natural tendency to heal itself?”
This article will explore what regenerative medicine therapy is, how it works, and why you should be paying attention to it. Let’s dive in!
What Is Regenerative Therapy?
Put simply, regenerative therapy is the process of restoring normal function to damaged cells, tissues, and even organs.
The reason why regenerative medicine is drawing so much interest is in the pursuit of leveraging the body’s natural healing process to produce healing from within, as opposed to the traditional method of treating symptoms of a disease. While modern medicine has made our lives exponentially better, we are still subject to the suffering of disease, age, and trauma.
Historically we’ve reduced suffering by managing the symptoms with traditional therapies, but with regenerative medicine we’re beginning to ask a very unique question “can we just regenerate the damaged tissue back to normal function?” If yes, we’ve produced lasting healing beyond just symptom management.
The next question then becomes, “what therapies are part of regenerative medicine?”
Different Regenerative Medicine Therapies
Broadly speaking, there are 2 major therapies within regenerative medicine worth discussing, they include:
- Tissue Allograft Therapy
- Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP)
How Does Regenerative Medicine Work?
We are still very much in the infancy of regenerative medicine, which means we’re constantly gathering new information and trying to uncover just exactly how these two therapies produce the healing they do.
Currently there are two primary patterns recognized in regenerative medicine which seems to occur in patients who have had a positive interaction with both tissue allograft therapy and PRP.
These include:
Inflammation Management
Many physicians believe many diseases can be attributed to runaway inflammation within the body. There’s certainly a good deal of evidence for this in musculoskeletal injuries and diseases, but more information is needed for chronic illnesses.
Nevertheless, tissue allograft therapy has been shown to help create unique environments for the body to manage inflammation better. With the introduction of tissue allograft, the body has shown a noticeable reduction in inflammation at and around the diseased tissue, which seems to produce a signal for healing to begin after the down regulation is finished.
Paracrine Signaling
In a significant amount of studies, physicians have noticed what appears to be a signal being sent by tissue allografts to the surrounding damaged tissue to begin the healing process. It appears this communication is critical to wound response, but even more important to tissue regeneration.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this article has provided you with a better understanding of regenerative medicine therapy, and how it works. In the end, regenerative medicine is all about providing patients with a new way of treating diseases in the never ending fight against difficult symptoms.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Conditions Can Regenerative Medicine Be Used For?
Regenerative medicine can be applied to a wide range of ailments, which include chronic diseases like arthritis to burn victims. Currently there’s been significant study for musculoskeletal healing and it’s where regenerative medicine is making a significant impact, but the application can be expanded to a wide range of conditions.