How Can a Stem Cell Injection Help Your Knee Heal Faster?

Knee pain can be difficult to deal with, and depending on how severe it is, it can be quite debilitating. While pain medication and rehab can do wonders, one treatment that has been shown to drastically improve how quickly your knee heals from injury and damage is stem cell injection therapy. Stem cell injections are a relatively new type of medical treatment that allows the body to activate its natural healing mechanism to heal faster than if it were just left alone.

If you’d like to learn more about stem cell therapy, how it works, and how it can help relieve your knee pain, then keep reading!

What is stem cell therapy?

Stem cell therapy is a revolutionary medical treatment that has become part of a wave of new ways to treat various conditions. The treatment works by extracting stem cells from the body and injecting them into problem areas of the body to treat a particular condition, such as knee pain.

Stem cells have already shown results in treating problems like hair loss, erectile dysfunction, and more. It is possible to get stem cell injections to treat knee pain after an injury or due to degenerative conditions like osteoarthritis, joint pain, and inflammation.

A stem cell is a special type of cell made by the body. Unlike other cells that are made to do a certain job, stem cells are cells that don’t yet have a job to do. In other words, they don’t yet have their task assigned. This means that scientists can take these “unassigned cells” and give them the instructions they want them to perform (at a cellular level) and reinsert them inside a person’s body.

In practice, a licensed medical practitioner specializing in stem cell therapy can take stem cells from a patient, typically from their bone marrow, and reinsert them into the body via injection to help heal the knee. The injection is given directly to the site of the pain to help improve the effects and promote healing.

Stem cell therapy has been shown to promote healing from not just typical injuries that a person might sustain due to playing sports or exercise but also the type of damage related to aging and degeneration of the knee that occurs over time and through impact and heavy use. Wear and tear on the knee and the surrounding bones can lead to acute and chronic pain. Stem cells make it possible to heal some of the damage done and restore the knee’s function.

Can stem cell injections really help heal knee conditions faster?

You may wonder what makes stem cells and injections a better alternative to other medical treatments. Well, the answer is simple. Stem cells allow the body to heal itself rather than relying on medicine.

It speeds up the natural healing process so that the knee is not only healed correctly but in less time than if left alone or treated with typical medical treatments. When the stem cells are reinserted into the body, they are coded to activate the body’s natural healing and repair mechanism.

This causes the stem cells to start working to repair the damage to the knee but also causes the body to produce more cells to help repair itself. Stem cells cause new cell growth, which can help repair the damage already done to the knee and then rebuild damaged tissue, bone, and other parts due to injury or disease.

For example, a recent study from the National Institute of Health ¹ (NIH) discusses the benefits of stem cell treatments for patients with osteoarthritis in the knee. Osteoarthritis causes severe chronic pain in the knee due to friction. The friction is caused by the thinning of the cartilage in the knee joint. Over time, our natural cartilage starts to thin, and we experience pain and inflammation.

Traditional treatments work to improve symptoms such as stiffness in the knee but cannot permanently relieve these symptoms or provide measurable relief for chronic pain. Patients have typically been prescribed a combination of rehab and medication to manage pain until ultimately needing to have surgery to replace the joint entirely. These costly procedures can be painful and have lasting long-term side effects, which is why they are a last resort for most patients.

Stem cells are different from other treatment options because stem cells, when injected into the cartilage area of the knee, can help the body naturally rebuild the missing cartilage, which is impossible otherwise. Other treatment options work to treat the pain caused by the lack of cartilage and to deal with the inflammation. In some cases, all that other treatments for knee pain do is mask the pain rather than treat the source of it. This may work temporarily, but in the end, the patient will still be in pain and will not have lasting relief.

Are there any side effects to stem cell injections for knee conditions?

Studies were conducted on the efficacy and side effects of stem cell treatment for knee pain, and based on the results of this study ² by the NIH; there were no obvious side effects for patients using stem cells to treat knee pain. The study showed a marked superiority in stem cells’ ability to repair knee damage and reduce overall knee pain compared to traditional treatments alone.

Doctors warn that traditional treatment and stem cell therapy are best used in conjunction to achieve optimal results. It is also important to note that while the results of the one study indicate no obvious side effects, the use of stem cells to treat knee pain, as well as a host of other conditions, is still being studied. Furthermore, because the stem cell technology needed to administer the treatment is still relatively new, no long-term data is available on the effects of stem cell use in different parts of the body.

Suppose a patient chooses to have stem cell injections performed to try and help with knee pain. In that case, it is best only to do so from a licensed medical professional, preferably one familiar with using stem cells to treat health issues. Before stem cells can be injected into the patient, the doctor will need to perform a full examination of the patient and evaluate their overall health, as certain conditions could cause adverse reactions to the stem cells, such as an autoimmune response that results in rejection of the stem cells, inflammation, and other issues.

Harvesting unhealthy stem cells can also cause side effects, so the doctor must ensure that the harvested cells are healthy and free of disease, which can be tied to the patient’s health.

Brief Summary

For those suffering from knee pain, it can feel like traditional treatments aren’t working, and the pain never gets any better. But that’s where trying stem cell therapy could be just the treatment you’re looking for to help speed up the healing process and get you back on your feet in no time.

To achieve maximum effect, stem cell therapy should always be combined with other treatments, such as medication and physical therapy. Your doctor will likely evaluate your progress at key intervals to ensure the stem cells have the desired effect and that you are safely on the road to recovery.