PRP For Your Needs
Regenerative medicine has become a huge buzzword in the field of medicine, and specifically, sports medicine. The treatments that previously only professional athletes could afford to get –and those taking place primarily overseas – now are readily available to just about anyone. And one of the household names in this ever-evolving arena is PRP: Platelet-rich plasma.
You may be familiar with PRP already, but if not, let’s do a quick summary. Basically, PRP is a processed and concentrated extract of the patient’s own blood injected back into a site of acute or chronic injury to help stimulate a new healing cascade. This process can then help heal, regenerate, or prevent further degeneration of the target tissue. If you would like to read more, check out our full post on PRP and regenerative medicine here.
PRP has been in use for the better part of the past 2 decades, yet research has only begun to fully study the minutia of PRP processing and clinical use. There are several different types of PRP preparations that a patient may encounter, and knowing which one to receive for their specific complaint is not always clear – especially when not even all clinicians are on the same page! Without getting into too many of the technical details, we wanted to offer a brief explanation of how we prepare our PRP at SageMED, and perhaps shed some light on why our success rates with regenerative injection therapies seem to consistently outperform even the best outcomes seen in the research world.
The regenerative medicine experts at SageMED use a closed, single-container, sterile system to collect, process, and extract the PRP with each individual patient. The commercially available (to physicians) kit is utilized for a few key reasons:
The closed sterile system minimizes the risks of contamination, breaking sterility, and potentially allowing for infection
Precise control over the quantity of PRP prepared with each individual patient and their specific needs
Precise control over the contents of leukocytes (white blood cells) in the PRP preparation, allowing for a more effective therapy of the specific condition being treated
A verified and researched system that provides not just adequate concentration of platelets, but optimal counts of deliverable platelets for each PRP preparation.
Not only do we at SageMED use what is, in our opinion, the best available PRP preparation kit for clinical PRP treatments, but we also have some additions that find their way into all of our regenerative medicine therapies.
In the ever-expanding field of anti-aging and regenerative medicine, a relatively new kid on the block is peptide therapy. Peptides are small amino acids structures that are either extracts of naturally occurring compounds in the body, or synthesized compounds that mimic small peptide actions in the body. These are generally short-lived, quick acting chemical messengers that can act on the physiology very specifically and in a broader manner as well. One specific peptide that has been studied to increase the effectiveness of PRP in stimulating a regenerative inflammatory response is Thymosin beta 4 (Tß-4).
Tß-4 is an extract of the human thymus gland, and has several studied actions including increasing recruitment of progenitor cells, helping form new blood vessels, and improving would healing. Some research has shown that the addition of Tß-4 to PRP can enhance the recruitment of fibroblasts, which in turn can stimulate a stronger collagen production process, thus further increasing the regenerative outcome of that injection therapy.
Another very fascinating peptide is body protection compound 157, or BPC-157. Another compound that is found naturally in the body, this peptide has been shown to accelerate wound healing of various tissues, including tendons and ligaments, as well as provide some analgesic (pain-killing) effects as well!
So, you may previously have heard of PRP, or even discussed it with others, but now you know that not all PRP is created equal. Our physicians at SageMED use their thorough clinical assessments to accurately diagnose the specific issues at hand and address them in the context of the overall health of the individual patient. Beyond simply treating with just regenerative injection therapies – such as PRP – our regenerative medicine experts strive to optimize the patients’ nutrition, exercise and biomechanics, sleep, hormones, mental and emotional health, and social wellbeing.
Are you interested in exploring regenerative medicines like PRP? Call or schedule online with our regenerative medicine experts and we can help you achieve the results you’re looking for!
