GOOD NEWS FOR
Bad Joints
Bad knees, bad hips, bad ankles … joints are a tricky business. When arthritis inflames a joint, it becomes stiff and painful. That’ s bad enough, but once the cartilage has worn away, patients wind up with a debilitating bone-on-bone condition and often consider having a knee replacement. Like any surgery, knee replacement involves significant downtime, pain management and recovery.
By Lisa Howard
Enter the next frontier of arthritic knee treatment: stem cells.“ We’ re trying to avoid having patients go under the knife,” says Danielle Stabley, a Physician Assistant at Allure who specializes in stem cell treatments.“ Regenerative medicine is here, and it’ s here to stay. It’ s all about patient education and letting people know that there is an alternative to knee replacement.” Unlike traditional knee replacement procedures, stem cell injections are non-surgical and involve very little downtime— just take it easy for 48 hours after the injections and plan on resuming your normal activities in a week. Compared to having surgery, stem cell treatments are also lower risk and less expensive.
“ The national average is that 95 percent of patients get at least a 50 percent improvement in pain levels with stem cell treatments.”
While knees are the most common joint to be affected by cartilage loss, any joint is a candidate for stem cell treatment.“ Stem cells regrow cartilage, so whether it’ s your shoulder, your hip, your ankle or even your toe, we can treat that joint with stem cells,” explains Danielle. Other candidates for stem cell treatments are patients suffering from autoimmune diseases, with MS patients in particular responding well to stem cells. That’ s because the cells have the capacity to replace existing cells that have lost their ability to carry out their assigned tasks, whether that’ s forming cartilage or nerve tissue. Healthy new cells mean restored function; restored function means being able to return to your usual activities.
Part of the stem cell treatments at Allure involve improving overall lifestyle habits in conjunction with the treatments— that way, stem cells can provide maximum benefits for a longer length of time. A nutritionist is on hand to help patients shift to a more plant-based diet that includes lots of healthy greens, and patients are also given probiotics and prebiotics to promote healthy gut flora that can help reduce overall inflammation as well as make it easier to maintain a healthy weight.( Less weight on joints = less stress on cartilage = longer-lasting cartilage.) Patients’ hormone levels are also tested since often people with auto-immune conditions have low testosterone levels. Getting those into a normal range increases the efficacy of the stem cell treatments.
While auto-immune conditions require recurrent treatment, patients with joint issues typically only need one round of stem cell injections.“ The national average is that 95 percent of patients get at least a 50 percent improvement in pain levels with stem cell treatments,” Danielle points out. In fact, some patients notice an immediate anti-inflammatory effect from the injections. It does take cartilage four to six months to start regrowing, however, so other patients see a gradual rather than immediate improvement. Severity makes a big difference, too— treating a patient with mild to moderate symptoms rather than moderate to severe symptoms means they’ ll have a better outcome.
Currently, Allure’ s Southgate, Livonia, Shelby, West Bloomfield, Warren, Clarkston and Beverly Hills locations offer stem cell treatments. As Allure expands its patient knowledge outreach, patients at their locations in Wisconsin, South Carolina and Kentucky will also have access to stem cell treatments.“ Ten years from now, I think there won’ t be many knee replacements being done,” Danielle says,“ because hopefully patients will start noticing their arthritis sooner and will start doing the regenerative treatments earlier on so that they never get to that bone-on-bone situation.”
That’ s good news for our knees!
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