Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), HGH and Their Role in Sports Medicine

Platelet Rich Plasma or PRP therapy is a new treatment used to assist in the regeneration of soft tissue such as ligaments and tendons and overall healing. PRP has a new role in sports medicine. It’s important that you understand PRP therapy and its benefits and that understanding begins with understanding a little bit about the science of ligament and tendon injuries.

Your ligaments and tendons are made up of collagen fibers that can be stretched or torn with an injury. We refer to these as a ‘tear,’ ‘pull,’ ‘strain,’ or ‘sprain. Since these are vascular structures this means they have blood vessels. Therefore, if you are injured these blood vessels will bleed. When there’s adequate bleeding you will see a bruise develop in the area of the injury.

The blood flow increase in the area to help with the healing. The blood will carry platelets along with growth factors, which lets tissue healing through the creation of new collagen fibers. There is a need for the new fibers to be built in a manner that is organized and layered in a proper manner so that healing can properly occur and let the tendons and ligaments heal so that they can regain their full flexibility and strength.

However, there are times when the healing does not occur correctly and rather than forming the necessary healthy collagen fibers, scar tissue will form there. One of the main risk factors is there is not an adequate supply of blood flowing to the area for the platelets.

Scar tissue will further inhibit the proper flow of blood, because new capillaries and small blood vessels won’t be able to penetrate the scar tissue to provide the necessary blood flow in the area that is injured. When new small blood vessels develop, it is called neovascularization or angiogenesis. When scarred tissue inhibits the flow of blood to the area, it then becomes blocked. What this means is that the tissue never gets the chance to heal properly. This is also, why sometimes tendons and ligaments don’t properly heal.

When your injuries do not heal properly, it can become extremely frustrating. You might try pain medications, anti inflammatory medications, gels, topical creams, physical therapy, braces, massage, cortisone injections and acupuncture and yet none of it works. Why? Because the therapies work to treat the pain and inflammation but they do not actually treat the scar tissue, which is the underlying problem, nor do they treat poor angiogenesis (blood flow) and disordered fibers.

What happens for many is that they give up and land up living with their pain and disability. Sometimes they even land up having surgery. PRP therapy can solve this problem. With PRP therapy, your own blood is taken in a simple single draw of blood. Then a special centrifuge machine is used where the blood is spun to separate it and for the platelets to be concentrated responsible for tissue healing.

The small amount of fluid that is collected with the concentrate platelets is safe because nothing is added to it, so there is no risk of rejection, reaction or allergy. This is a natural process but they need to put in the right place to be effective.

Your doctor will then use an ultrasound machine to identify the exact location of the tendon or ligament injury. Your doctor can then inject the PRP directly to the area that is injured and it can even be injected in tightly woven collagen fibers, injected into small tears that aren’t as obvious on the MRI. When these platelets are present in the injury area, they are activated. They will then draw near other healing factors or proteins, and regeneration and healing of your tissue begins.

The PRP therapy has been used in Europe extensively for many years and is not just becoming popular in the United States as more people become aware of the benefits. The concept isn’t actually new. For decades, people have been trying to needle tissue or inject irritants to the area to try to improve the blood flow.

The development of PRP now allows us to take advantage of exact healing factor within your blood right to the injured area so that healing can occur, which might not heal otherwise. PRP therapy can help two different types of patients.The patient that has a chronic injury or chronic pain

The patient with an acute injury that can take 8 to 12 weeks to heal

PRP therapy speeds up the healing process, which is why it is so popular with athletes that have acute or chronic tendon injuries:

Plantar fasciitis (foot/ankle)
Achilles tendonitis and partial tears (foot/ankle)
Patellar tendonitis and tears (knee)
Quadriceps tendonitis and tears (knee)
Hamstring strains (thigh)
Medial epicondylitis (golfer’s elbow)
Lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow)
Rotator cuff tendonitis and partial tears (shoulder)

PRP therapy is also used to treat acute and chronic ligament sprains and injuries:

Elbow
Foot and Ankle
Hand
Knee

Exciting News on PRP Therapy in Treating Arthritis

The most exciting news is that recently PRP has been shown to be effective in the treatment of osteoarthritis, which is an inflammatory condition where the cartilage within your joint breaks down. While it remains unproven whether PRP therapy is effective at regrowing the cartilage that’s been lost or to slow down the cartilage breakdown, there is ample evidence in treating arthritis and its effectiveness.

New studies show that PRP is far more effective than current conservative treatments and it outperformed better than hyaluronic acid injections (viscosupplementation) in studies that went up against each other in studies.

Therefore, PRP therapy has the potential to offer an excellent non-invasive alternative in treating symptoms of arthritis and reducing the number of joint replacements in the knee, ankle, foot, hip and shoulder.

Conclusion PRP Therapy and Sports Injuries

When it comes to the treatment of sports injuries, the research on PRP therapy is exciting and offers a great deal of promise for athletes that are injured. In addition, if an HGH supplement such as Genf20 Plus is taken at the same time as PRP therapy the healing results could be faster and better.