Inflammation can limit mobility, prevent flexibility, and leave you sitting on the sidelines of your own life. Whether you have consistent inflammation from a medical condition or occasional flareups from a nagging injury, you’re at the point where you’re ready to try something new besides medication after medication.
At Weiss Chiropractic & Regenerative Wellness, we offer a treatment called platelet-rich plasma therapy. In this article, we’ll tell you what this form of therapy is, which conditions it can treat, and why you might consider it for your own pain.
While PRP therapy can lessen inflammation, it can do so much more than that. These injections can trigger healing across the body and even get hair to grow. From athletes to those with old injuries or chronic health conditions, this form of therapy will treat pain and thus improve quality of life.
Each injection has platelets, as the name tells you. These blood cells have two main functions. For one, platelets begin the healing of wounds through their blood proteins. Secondly, platelets can cause clots in the blood. This way, when you cut or scrape yourself, you don’t end up bleeding out from a simple wound.
When you receive one of these platelet injections, then, it starts that same healing. This can repair most tissue damage and alleviate inflammation as well.
You may wonder, where does the blood come from that’s used for this therapy? It’s actually your own. The treatment begins with the doctor or medical professional requesting a sample of your blood. That blood then goes into a device, often a centrifuge.
In the centrifuge, the blood rotates faster and faster. During this spinning, the centrifuge can isolate parts of the blood, particularly the platelets. The doctor then collects the platelets from the centrifuge, puts them in a syringe, and injects you with them. According to Medical News Today, the blood that goes through a centrifuge has more platelets than typical blood. The rate is 5x or 10x more. That can cause faster healing.
There’s a slew of conditions that PRP therapy can help with, managing pain and possibly even increasing mobility. These include the following:
Chronic patellar tendinopathy, a knee condition that often affects athletesIf you have inflammation, pain, and immobility, then you would probably react best to platelet injections. Joint conditions like osteoarthritis often cause the affected part of the body to stiffen up to the point of inflexibility. With recurrent platelet injections, the patient may again retain comfortable movement. Some of the symptoms that PRP Therapy will help with:
Knee painTissue damage, specifically to the muscles, ligaments, and tendons, might decrease with this therapy as well. Ligaments rarely heal easily, but platelet injections can accelerate healing. That makes this form of therapy particularly appealing to athletes.
According to Stem Cells Translational Medicine, you may also achieve more hair growth with PRP therapy. A 2015 study had two groups, men who received the therapy and those who didn’t. The researchers looked at the hair density for both groups of men, of which there were 20. What did they find? Those who got the platelet injections had hair with a higher density as well as more of it.
If you’re considering platelet-rich plasma therapy, we encourage you to come to us at Weiss Chiropractic & Regenerative Wellness. We use regenerative, functional, and preventative medicines to improve the lives of our patients. From PRP therapy to regenerative stem cell therapy, our staff can treat pain associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD, peripheral neuropathy, osteoarthritis, and more.
171 Highway 61 Imperial, NE 69033, United States
Phone: (308) 882-8020