What is Regenerative Medicine?
Regenerative medicine is a field of medicine that uses functional tissues to repair or replace damaged tissues and organs. This process involves stimulating the body’s organs to heal themselves at an accelerated and more efficient rate. Regenerative medicine could potentially solve the problem of available donated organs as scientists can grow necessary tissues and organs in a laboratory.
Just as your body heals itself from cut or bruise, regenerative medicine taps your body’s own healing power to promote healing in targeted areas. It can be applied to injuries, disease and more. Is a regenerative process right for you? Odom Health and Wellness offers multiple types of regenerative medicine Minnesota patients can benefit from.
Types of Regenerative Medicine
Different regenerative treatments work in different ways to accomplish different goals. The best way to know which is right for you is to schedule and intake with one of our medical professionals. They may recommend any one or a combination of the following:
Prolotherapy
Prolotherapy is a popular method of regenerative medicine at our clinic. “Prolo” is short for proliferation, as the treatment causes proliferation (growth and formation) of new ligament tissues in areas where they’ve become weak.
Prolotherapy is used in stabilizing joint structures and decreasing the progression of pain and aging. The most basic Prolotherapy solution contains dextrose, which is a naturally occurring sugar, combined with lidocaine, an anesthetic. The injections can help with:
- Joint pain
- Knee, shoulder, neck and back injuries
- Shoulder and hip regeneration
- Bursitis
Dr. John Odom is one of a select few premier physicians in the Midwest area skilled in the Hackett-Hemwall method of Prolotherapy. The treatment involves an injection near the targeted ligament or tendon attachment at the bone or joint. This causes a localized inflammation that increases blood supply and nutrient flow to stimulate self-healing by the affected tissue.
For more information, see our prolotherapy services page.
PRP Therapy
“PRP” is the abbreviation for “Platelet Rich Plasma.” It is a treatment similar to Prolotherapy that involves targeted injections at injured sites to stimulate the self-healing of tissues. The exact process of PRP therapy involves drawing blood from a patient, spinning it through a centrifuge to separate platelets and growth factors into a concentrated serum and then injecting the serum into the patient.
PRP therapy can be used to repair chronic degenerative joints, ligaments, tendon injuries and more. It is proven to be effective for:
- Tennis elbow
- Golf elbow
- Rotator cuff injuries
- Tendonitis and tendinosis
Learn more at our PRP services page.
Stem Cell Therapy
Like the previous examples of regenerative medicine, Stem Cell therapy involves injection into a dysfunctional site of the body to stimulate the body’s own regenerative healing processes. However, this therapy differs in that it uses ethically sourced, live stem cells as its injection materials.
Stem cell therapy treats an incredibly wide variety of ailments, some of which include:
- Arthritis
- Degenerative disc disease
- Muscle tears
- Joint pain
Not only do these treatments work to accelerate the body’s natural healing processes, but they also significantly lower pain.
At Odom’s regenerative and sports medicine clinic, we use an ethically sourced stem cells – an allograft derived from the Wharton’s Jelly of an umbilical cord. We care deeply about the ethical sourcing of our product as well as its overall performance and quality. The voluntary donors of the product are screened for any history of communicable diseases and behavioral risk. A licensed professional then collects the donated tissue.
The tissue is sanitized, cleaned and processed, and then put through a slow freeze process. A third-party lab performs sterility testing, and the Biotech medical director authorizes secondary donor tests. All the processes and testing comply with FDA standards. Because it is a biologically young source and has high viable Mesenchymal Stem Cell counts, this product performs better than most others.
Visit our stem cell services page to learn more about its safety and effectiveness.
Tap the Power of Regenerative Medicine for Your Pain
Here at our Minnetonka, MN clinic Dr. Odom performs Stem Cell therapy, PRP therapy and prolotherapy to combat the pain of sports injury, aging and a variety of health issues. If you have any questions about any of the discussed therapies, please call us at 952-522-3754 or visit our Prolotherapy, PRP and Stem Cell pages on our website! Or schedule an appointment with one of our friendly medical staff.