What do Tiger Woods, Eric Dickerson, and Rafael Nadal have in common, aside from being top athletes in their respective sports? Each of them turns to the regenerative benefits of PRP (platelet-rich plasma) therapy and other biologic treatments as a natural way to deal with injuries and general wear-and-tear that accompanies their careers.
The magic of PRP is that it uses blood from your own body to accelerate natural healing when high-level performance takes a toll on soft tissue and joints, reducing inflammation and pain while speeding the recovery process. Dr. Franz Jones specializes in PRP therapy as an effective and natural addition to many pain management programs.
Any procedure that uses living tissue as part of your health care is considered a biologic treatment. PRP therapy accomplishes this by the use of cells called platelets. Better still, these platelets are derived from just a small sample of your own blood.
A medium-density component of your blood, platelets settle above the heavier red blood cells and below the lighter blood plasma when your sample is placed in a centrifuge. Extracting the platelets from the treated sample and mixing it with a small amount of plasma yields a serum with a high concentration of platelets.
You may have heard about platelets as the blood component that forms clots when you cut or scrape yourself. As well as this ability, platelets also carry chemical messengers called growth factors. These hormone-like substances provide various signals that oversee the creation of new tissue.
Because platelets normally arrive only through regular blood flow, an injured area of your body may need to wait for sufficient platelets to arrive to complete healing processes. Injecting PRP serum directly into the areas surrounding an injury provides an extreme boost of these important messengers.
When Tiger Woods suffered injuries to an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), lateral collateral ligament (LCL), and Achilles tendon, he used PRP as part of his recovery treatments. He returned to the game in 2009 and had one of his best seasons.
Running back Eric Dickerson suffered 11 years of hard NFL play. Left with severe lower back pain that also affected his right leg, Dickerson turned to PRP therapy to reduce pain and improve his daily living.
Tennis pro Rafael Nadal was in danger of losing his career to knee injuries. Adding PRP treatments to his training and recovery returned him to his usual place in the upper echelons of the sport.
You don’t need to be a high-level athlete to enjoy the benefits of PRP therapy. In fact, it’s a go-to treatment for arthritis and other soft tissue injuries even if you’ve never played sports. With PRP, you can benefit from reduced pain and lower doses of medications, adding up to improved quality of life.
Contact Franz Jones, DO, at one of his three offices, by phone or online, to find out more about PRP and other biologic treatments that may be right for you.
