Those who have never dealt with joint pain will never know how prominent it is in the lives of those who suffer from it. Unlike most people believe, pain in the joints is more than just the occasional ache. Bad joints can negatively affect every aspect of an individual’s daily life and prevent him from doing the things he loves. Here at Optimal Health & Wellness in Pasadena, CA, we’re happy to offer non-surgical treatments to anyone suffering joint problems.
How Can You Treat Your Joint Pain Without Surgery? Try Regenerative Injection Therapy!
What Is Regenerative Injection Therapy?
Many people find that physical therapy or other conventional regenerative therapy options do not fully address the issue, and they rarely tackle the problem at the source. We were inspired to start using injection therapy on our patients with joint pain for a solution that targets the culprit directly. Regenerative injection therapy is superior to traditional regenerative therapies because solutions like physical therapy cannot return your joint to 100% mobility and strength like our injection therapies can.
The regenerative injection therapy options we offer our patients include stem cells, prolotherapy, platelet-rich plasma injections, Prolozone, and the Ozone Clot Matrix. With these treatments, patients can heal faster and more thoroughly. These injections help with both local joint pain and referred pain, which is when the associated ache is felt in areas separate from the painful joint. These injections can also be just as effective for old injuries and ailments as they are for new ones.
Stem Cells
Patients can opt to receive this treatment in conjunction with joint surgery for faster healing and less inflammation following their procedure. The vast majority of our patients, however, find they’d rather avoid complicated surgeries with extensive downtimes since stem cell therapy is just as effective without invasive procedures. For this treatment, we extract your own stem cells, purify them, and re-inject them directly into the problem site.
Since we only use cells from your body, the risk of your body rejecting foreign substances is nonexistent. Once we inject the purified stem cells into the target area, your body does all the rest on its own. Stem cells can naturally decrease your body’s inflammatory response at the injury site, they can act as protectors of other injured cells while they self-repair, and stem cells can stimulate other nearby cells to encourage increased cellular regeneration.
What Are Stem Cells?
Our stem cells are incredibly important because they contain the blueprints for every specialized cell in our bodies such as skin cells, tissue cells, and anything from brain cells to muscle cells. Our stem cell count naturally diminishes as we age, so by the time we reach the age of 65 we are only producing about 200 stem cells every 30 days. Extracting, purifying, and re-introducing the stem cells into your body will help you generate more stem cells.
Stem cells also have no shortage of superpowers that make them such potent healers. Just a few of the things these ground-breaking cells can do include the ability to self-renew and replicate multiple times, the ability to recreate the body’s functional tissues, and the ability to send signals to other cells to command them to perform tasks like healing.
Prolotherapy
This treatment got its name from the word “proliferate,” and it’s a fitting name because prolotherapy causes new ligament tissue such as collagen to reproduce rapidly. Not only does this treatment aim to repair the joints, but it’s also significantly effective at relieving pain. Much like stem cell therapy, prolotherapy aims to use our body’s own natural abilities to rebuild damage done to our tissues and ligaments through increased collagen production.
The solution we use for injections during our prolotherapy treatment sessions is a proprietary blend of the simplified sugar dextrose, important natural nutrients such as vitamin B12, and local anesthetic in the form of procaine or lidocaine. The solution is meticulously measured to contain just the right amount of each ingredient to produce a controlled inflammatory response that attracts healing cells to the problem area.
What Is Collagen?
This is the name of a prominent protein naturally found in our bodies, and collagen is instrumental in the health of our joints and skin. Collagen exists in our bones, blood, and even our muscles and takes up a third of the body’s total protein count. Just like stem cells, our bodies naturally produce less and less collagen the older we get.
A lack of ample collagen means that your joints won’t have enough connective tissue to hold them together, and this is what causes the discomfort you’re feeling.
Platelet-Rich Plasma
Our blood contains healing properties called growth factors that take the form of small fragments of cells called platelets. When we get a cut or a bruise, these platelets are the first line of defense against infection and the first to arrive at the injury site. These platelets contain the unique ability to signal to the body’s other growth factors that repairs are necessary, and platelets can even tell these growth factors where to go.
During our platelet-rich plasma injections, we take a concentrated group of platelets and growth factors with a small amount of plasma and introduce this to the problem site. The platelets go to work rapidly healing the injury with fast tissue regeneration.
Prolozone
Ozone is a form of oxygen that possesses tissue-healing, scar-dissolving, inflammation-diminishing, immune system-boosting properties. For Prolozone, we combine ozone with essential amino acids and vitamins in order to stimulate and regenerate damaged tissue. Some patients prefer to receive this treatment supplementally with prolotherapy, stem cells, or platelet-rich plasma treatments.
Ozone Clot Matrix
Those who prefer our platelet-rich plasma regenerative injections find even better success when they opt for the Ozone Clot Matrix. This enhanced and upgraded form of platelet-rich plasma combines activated blood with ozone to create a “matrix” to ensure the platelet-rich plasma remains within the target joint for up to two weeks. This greatly enhances tissue regeneration for patients who underwent our platelet-rich plasma injections.
Find Out More
As experts in regenerative medicine, our goal is to provide all our patients with the opportunity to relieve their pain once and for all with safe, effective, and affordable options. We believe the work we do at our practice is paving the way for the future of medicine. Every patient possesses the power to heal themselves within their body, so call us today here at Optimal Health & Wellness in Pasadena, CA if you’re ready to harness your healing powers!
