The Human body is an amazing machine with outstanding healing capabilities. Did you ever wonder as a child how when you scraped your knee that after a few days to a week, it would just magically heal on its own?
Well this of course is not magic, its your body's amazing healing process that it conducts without any concsious effort. So how exactly does this work, and how is science using this natural ability to better heal injuries?
When your body undergoes a physical injury, it responds by increasing blood supply to the injured area. This is because your blood contains a special concoction of cells that carry with it the ability to heal its self. One of the main components of this process is conducted by cells called "Platelets". Platelets are special cells that travel through the blood stream, and when activated by an injury, stick together and form blood clots. Blood clots can then impede the flow of blood from a physical wound thus restricting the amount of blood lossed by an individual. These platelets will then release growth factors that will trigger the body to increase production of more reparative cells.
This is where science has found a clever way to leverage this natural healing process. With Platelelt-Rich Plasma Injections (PRP), a few tubes of a patients blood are taken and ran through a centrifuge to concentrate the volume of Platelets. The highly concentrated activated Platelets, are then injected back into the body at the location of the injury. This increases the body's healing response by releasing even more growth factors and reparative cells.
PRP has been shown to dramatically speed up the healing process as well as reduce inflammation and pain. Some of the most common use cases for PRP are treating tears of the rotator cuff, Achilles tendron ruptures, tendonitis, and arthritis. One of the key advantages that has been recognized with PRP is that it can reduce the need for anti-inflammatories and opioid medications. Side effects of this process are also rare due to it being the patient's own blood that is used in the injections. Pretty cool right?
Feel free to contact me if interested or have any more questions about PRP. We have recently added PRP to our tool belt and we are very excited to share it with more of you.
