What is sports injury recovery?

Sports injury recovery is the healing process you go through after damaging your body when playing sports. It often requires expert treatment to restore full function to injured tissues and prevent chronic pain and weakness.
Sports injuries are common. The most likely causes of a sports injury include:

• Trips and falls
• Stretching too far
• Exceeding your fitness levels
• Collisions
• Using old or unsupportive footwear
• Exercising on hard surfaces
• Not caring for a minor injury
• Inadequate warming up or cooling down
• Not wearing suitable protective equipment

Sports injuries prevent you from taking part in the activities you love. If you don’t get the proper treatment, you might have to play at a lower level or give up your sport completely. Therefore, it’s wise to seek help from specialists like the Regenerative & Sports Medicine team to ensure optimal sports injury recovery.

What conditions might require sports injury treatment?

You might recover from a problem like a mild strain or charley horse (cramp) in a muscle without needing professional sports injury treatment. However, not getting help for more serious injuries or ones that don’t resolve quickly and completely, could cause long-term problems.
Common kinds of sports injuries that typically require treatment include:

• Concussion (head injuries)
• Torn muscles
• Ligament sprains
• Tendon strains
• Dislocations
• Cartilage injuries
• Stress fractures
• Tendinitis

Proper sports injury recovery is vital — even a seemingly straightforward condition like tendinitis (inflammation of the tendons) can lead to complications. Without the right therapy, tendinitis could develop into tendinosis, where the tissue starts to break down. In addition, many sports injuries result in joint instability if they don’t get the proper attention.

What does sports injury recovery involve?

Some of the sports injury recovery options that Regenerative & Sports Medicine uses include:
Physical therapy
Physical therapy helps heal and strengthen tissues following a sports injury. There are numerous kinds of therapies, some active (like exercises you do each day) and some passive. Examples of passive therapies include heat and ice, bracing, therapeutic ultrasound, massage, and taping.
Biologics
Biologic treatments include platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, peptide therapy, and stem cell injections. They use your body’s own cells to encourage faster tissue healing.
Cryotherapy
Cryotherapy uses extreme cold in short bursts to encourage healing and improve well-being.
It’s also important to consider the way you look after your body. Staying hydrated, managing stress, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and avoiding unhealthy fats, sugars, and bad habits like smoking, can all make a significant difference to how well your body heals following a sports injury.

 What is stem cell therapy?

Stem cell therapy is an exciting medical development that’s become increasingly popular in recent years. Stem cells can renew themselves and become any cell type present in your body.

Adult stem cells replace damaged and dead cells, so injecting a concentrated dose into injured tissues can boost natural healing. Stem cell therapy is helpful in treating many conditions, including:

• Arthritis
• Chronic back or neck pain
• Sports injuries
• Joint pain
• Tendinitis

In addition to these musculoskeletal disorders, stem cells show promise in treating conditions such as heart disease, vascular disorders, dementia and autoimmune diseases.

How are stem cells collected?

The Regenerative & Sports Medicine team helps prepare your stem cells for collection using Neupogen®. 

FDA-approved Neupogen is a stem cell mobilizing agent (filgrastim) that’s been in use for over 20 years.

Neupogen mimics the natural processes that stimulate stem cell production in your bone marrow and release the cells into your blood. This enables the team to collect large quantities of the highest quality stem cells.

Your first Neupogen injection is three days before the stem cell collection date. You then receive an injection every day until the harvesting process takes place. There are two ways to harvest your stem cells:

Collecting stem cells from your blood

Harvesting stem cells from your blood uses a process called apheresis, which is virtually painless. Apheresis involves using two intravenous lines to collect blood and divide it into stem cells and other cells. The other cells go back into your body.

The process takes several hours, but the Regenerative & Sports Medicine team provides a comfortable environment during the treatment. 

Collecting stem cells from fat

They can extract the stem cells using liposuction, after which the collected fat goes to a lab for further processing. Another option is to combine fat stem cell collection with apheresis. This method could produce better-quality stem cells in higher numbers.

Regenerative & Sports Medicine freezes your stem cells for when you need them. This method of storage means the stem cells remain in good condition for your lifetime.

What happens during stem cell therapy?

If the team at Regenerative & Sports Medicine believes you could benefit from an injection of stem cells, it takes a few days to defrost and prepare the cells.

Injections don’t take long and are outpatient procedures. A stem cell injection into a complex joint like the knee might require image-guidance technology to enable precision delivery of the cells.

To learn more about stem cell therapy and how you could benefit from it, call the Regenerative & Sports Medicine office in Santa Monica, California or Houston, Texas to book an appointment online today.