Nothing stops life in its tracks faster than arthritis pain. Unfortunately, this common condition doesn’t stop there, and it can make even the simplest tasks impossible.
Arthritis causes multiple problems, ranging from aching joints to limited mobility. What’s made this condition even more frustrating has been the lack of effective treatments — until now. When it comes to cracking the arthritis puzzle, there’s great promise in regenerative medicine.
Here at Accelerated Medical, our providers believe that the most effective and successful treatments don’t just mask your symptoms. Instead, they address the root cause of the issue. By offering regenerative medicine treatments, namely platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy, we can provide our clients in Elko, Nevada, with a powerful healing boost, leading to more sustainable results.
We share more about how PRP therapy is helping our patients with arthritis regain active lives.
Understanding arthritis symptoms
To better understand the power of PRP therapy as an osteoarthritis treatment, it helps to quickly touch on what happens when this form of arthritis strikes your joints.
Osteoarthritis develops when the articular cartilage in your joint breaks down. This tissue is the slippery substance covering the ends of your bones, which lets them glide smoothly against each other.
When your articular cartilage breaks down, it leaves your bones unprotected. As a result, you can have pieces of cartilage and bone floating around within your joint, triggering inflammation, and pain. This issue only worsens when you continue using the joint.
Unfortunately, there’s no cure for osteoarthritis, which is why the doctors primarily treat its symptoms rather than the underlying problem, mainly the breakdown of cartilage in the joint. This is also where regenerative therapies like PRP are making a difference.
Harnessing the healing power of your platelets
Your blood contains four primary ingredients: white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets, and plasma. Your platelets primarily clot your blood, which keeps you from bleeding too much when you have a cut. After your platelets slow the flow of blood to your injury, they start releasing growth factors in the damaged area to support the process of rebuilding and repairing the tissues.
When your platelets release growth factors, these proteins signal other healing agents within your body to come to the area and help with regenerating the tissues and reducing inflammation.
How platelet-rich plasma therapy works
With our PRP therapy, we simply concentrate and focus your body’s own natural healing resources to repair damage in a specific area. First, we draw some of your blood and use a centrifuge to separate your platelets from the other blood components. Then, we mix these concentrated growth factors back into a small amount of plasma and inject the PRP into your joints.
This approach gives your arthritic joints the healing boost they need to repair and rebuild lost connective tissue, and your body readily accepts the PRP injection, generally without any issue. However, the healing process triggered by PRP does take some time, and you may need more than one treatment. Rest assured, you’ll be rewarded when the pain decreases, and your joints move more freely again.
To get started with this revolutionary treatment for arthritis, please schedule an appointment at our convenient location in the Medical District at the base of the Summit. Just call (775)753-7387 or request a consultation online today.