South Mag South Issue 71 | Page 74

HEALTH 2018 REPORTS Plus EMERGENCY MED KITS TRAGEDY SEEMED TO STRIKE IN 2017 IN VARIOUS WAYS, BUT ONE MESSAGE WAS LOUD AND CLEAR. BEING PREPARED SAVES LIVES. MANY LIVES WERE SAVED AT THE SHOOTING IN LAS VEGAS BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE TRAINED TO SAVE LIVES BY SIMPLY APPYING SOME SIMPLE TECHNIQUES THAT YOU TOO CAN LEARN. Page 72 STEM CELL TRIALS CUTTING EDGE THERAPY IN THE SOUTH IT’S SAID THAT, AT A SUFFICIENTLY HIGH LEVEL, TECHNOLOGY SIMPLY BECOMES MAGIC. SOMEONE COMING OUT OF A 30-YEAR COMA, FOR EXAMPLE, WOULD HAVE A HECK OF A TIME WRAPPING THEIR HEAD AROUND THE FACT THAT WE CAN NOW USE OUR PHONES TO DO EVERYTHING FROM CONTROLLING THE TEMPERATURE OF OUR HOUSE TO BUYING GROCER IES. That shock would double when that person finds out about the tremendous breakthroughs in modern medicine. If they think a smartphone is amazing, imagine how they’d react to the tantalizing possibility that we could use specialized cells to replace damaged body parts with entirely new ones. 74 S OUT H M AGA ZI NE.C OM “It’s not the fountain of youth, but it’s the regenerative material that can be directed to grow a new body part; It sounds crazy,” said Dr. Priscilla Ross, part of a bleeding-edge FDA-approved study on the frontiers of this new science. The study, currently underway at University of Miami, aims to eliminate degenerative disc disease (DDD) by utilizing special cells called marrow-isolated adult multilineage inducible (MIAMI) cells. Harvested from human bone marrow, these keys could potentially be a game-changer in internal medicine. At the risk of oversimplifying a very complex process, by adding these MIAMI cells to a specific matrix, researchers are able to turn them into nearly everything. Including, most tantalizingly, spinal tissue.