Billionaire businessmen and athletes are traveling to places like the Bahamas and Panama to undergo the procedure on their knees.
Longevity enthusiasts and those suffering from arthritis are spending thousands of dollars on stem cell injections into their knees for treatment. According to experts, mesenchymal stem cells (or MSCs) – multipotent cells that can differentiate into several cell types, including those of bone, cartilage, fat and muscle – are being used by wealthy people, including Bryan Johnson, the entrepreneur famous for spending a fortune to try to reverse the aging process in various body treatments.
Mayo Clinic says stem cell therapy is a promising solution to correct a variety of degenerative, traumatic, genetic and autoimmune disorders, such as leukemia and diabetes, as approved by the FDA. However, using another person’s cells to keep knees healthy is a relatively new feat and has not yet received approval.
In arthritis, the cartilage that covers the ends of bones begins to deteriorate and wear away. As bones lose this protective covering, they rub against each other. This results in pain, swelling, and stiffness, and ultimately, loss of function and mobility.
Millions of people in the United States suffer from osteoarthritis of the knee. Many manage symptoms with exercise, weight loss, medical treatments and lifestyle changes. And if symptoms become severe, total knee replacement is an option. More than 600,000 people in the United States undergo this operation each year. But doctors say stem cell therapy may be an alternative to surgery.
And so billionaires and athletes are flying to places like the Bahamas and Panama to undergo the procedure on their knees, according to the The New York Post.
How does stem cell therapy work??
Doctors inject healthy stem cells into a person, which help regenerate and repair damaged tissue. Medical experts hope the therapy, which uses cells from other people, could be used to treat a long list of medical problems.
“What I really hope is that in the future, when we go to the doctor’s office for our annual checkup and get our flu shot, maybe we’ll also get a stem cell booster, either to treat our current conditions or to delay their onset, to treat our bodies in the best possible way regardless of what the genetic lottery has given us,” Matthias Bernow, chief executive of the biotechnology company Cellcolabs that provided the stem cells for Johnson’s procedure, told The Associated Press. Business information.
Joint regeneration therapy is expensive
However, stem cell therapy is currently extremely expensive and requires much more research, especially when used for newer treatments such as joint regeneration.
Johnson claims he has spent $16,500 on each injection into his knees. His spokespeople say Johnson was injected with cells from young, healthy Swedish volunteers, after detailed evaluation and peer-reviewed studies on potential longevity treatments. However, he has yet to notice any major changes.
“That’s probably because my health biomarkers are already in the top 1 percent for muscle, fat, metabolic health, cardiovascular health, etc.,” Johnson said. Business information“Therefore, it is quite difficult for my subjective feeling of well-being to improve.”
What are the side effects and risks?
Studies say stem cell treatment for knees is noninvasive and has minimal side effects. health lineAfter the procedure, some people may experience a temporary increase in pain and swelling.
However, when the procedure uses stem cells that come from your own body, the risk of serious side effects is reduced. But when they are extracted and processed from another person, the likely side effects are still unknown.
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