You may have seen or read about the benefits of stem cells in the media while you may think about its aid in being beneficial to a loved one with a serious ailment. There may be a doubt in you about stem cells, their formation, benefits, how are they helpful in treating various ailments or injuries, and why are they the hot topic of the medical field. Below are some of the stem cell therapy secrets and other details that make it a key element in medical treatments.
What Are Stem Cells?
Stem cells are the raw material of the human body which is responsible for the generation of other cells with specific functions. Stem cells will divide further and form daughter cells under feasible conditions. These daughter cells either form new stem cells or specialized cells with more precise functions like heart cells, blood cells, brain cells pr bone cells. These are the only cells in the body that can naturally develop new cell types.
What is Stem Cell Therapy?
Stem cell therapy makes use of adult stem cells to specifically regenerate the cells in specific body ailments and sports injuries, joint problems, disc disintegration, soft issue erosion, etc. This procedure offers the body to stimulate itself in healing naturally without the requirement of steroids, surgeries, or pain killers.
Why is the High Hype on Stem Cells?
Stem stell has been helpful across multiple categories like:
- Analyzing the cause of ailments: By analyzing the growth of stem cells across various regions like the heart, bones, muscles, brain, and other organs, researchers are getting a better understanding of diseases and their complications.
- Develop healthy cells for swapping with diseased ones: This one of the highly used benefits where stem cells can be stimulated to convert to precise cells such as in regenerative medicine. It effectively repairs the damaged cells and tissues in individuals.
- People who may be aided from stem cell treatments are those with type 1 diabetes, spinal cord ailments, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer complications, burns, etc.
- Stem cells can be developed to become new tissues that may be employed in even organ transplants. Constant studies are going on in this regard to find the further benefits of stem cells in regenerative medicine.
- Instead of trying the trial drugs among patients, researchers are making use of stem cells to test various drugs for their effectiveness and safety. This kind of testing has a great impact on the development of many types of drugs.
- Many studies are going on to enhance the effectiveness of stem cells that have been altered into function-specific cells to test the new drugs. For this purpose, stem cells have to be altered exactly as the type of cells targeted by the drug. Heart muscle cells must be generated to test a drug-related to heart disease. Tests may reveal the effects of the new drugs on these cells and if there is any harm to them.
Where Do Stem Cells Come From?
Embryonic Stem Cells: This type of stem cell is derived from the 3 to 5 days embryos. This embryo has around 150 cells that could be divided into further stem cells or can be transformed into any type of cell in the body. This flexibility of embryonic stem cells is mainly used in regenerative therapy to repair tissues and organs.
Adult Stem Cells: They are found in adult tissues like fat or bone marrow. These adult stem cells have limited ability than embryonic stem cells in generating specific cells of the body. But primary studies only showed that adult stem cells could only give rise to the same kind of cells. For example, it was believed that heart cells could only give rise to heart cells. But recent studies have proven that adult stem cells can be employed in generating diverse types of cells. For example, bone marrow cells can be employed in generating nerve cells or heart cells. This has given a chance to test the usefulness of drugs in various types of cells.
Adult Cells Transformed to Have Properties of Embryonic Stem Cells: This latest technique has allowed the researchers to employ reset cells in the place of embryonic stem cells to eliminate rejection of cells from the same body. But there have been continuous efforts going on to find if there are any adverse effects on humans. This type of therapy has aided researchers to take one type of cell and transform them into another specific functional cell.
Perinatal Stem Cells. There has been a discovery of stem cells in the umbilical blood cord and amniotic fluid that can transform into specialized cells. Studies have been made by testing the stem cells from amniotic fluids from pregnant women that help in testing irregularities accurately.
Benefits of Stem Cell Therapy:
- There will no danger of rejection from the body.
- This therapy is the only minimally invasive procedure when compared to other surgical treatments such as knee replacement and many more. This procedure is relatively simple and can be done in the out-patient section of a healthcare clinic without the requirement of any pain killers after completion.
- Evading surgery – There has been extensive use of stem cells to aid many individuals in knee replacement or arthroscopy, find substitutes to back surgery like spinal fusion or lumbar disc replacement, and also to evade many other orthopedic surgeries.
- Ability to reconstruct the healthy tissue
- The patient will not require to spend ample time in the recovery process.
- No use of general anesthesia due to the minimally invasive nature, there may mild oral medicines suggested.
- The recovery time will be much faster without any crutches or bracing.
- Substantial reduction in pain and enhanced flexibility.
Bottom Line
If you are looking to gain the benefits of stem cell therapy and PRP (Platelet-rich plasma) then associate with EC Medical Group. They offer a customized and effective treatment strategy that is a part of regenerative medicine.
