Prolotherapy is a form of regenerative medicine that has similarities to stem cell therapy. It is a treatment that is applied by injection that works by stimulating the recovery of damaged tissue and the promotion of improved health and quality of life.
However, there are ways in which prolotherapy is significantly different from stem cell therapy. Let’s compare prolotherapy vs stem cell therapy and see how they each work towards the goal of encouraging damaged tissue to heal.
What is Prolotherapy and How Does it Work?
While stem cell treatment is a relatively recent development in regenerative medicine, world prolotherapy has been in use for several decades. The term prolotherapy is short for “proliferative therapy,” because the process involves stimulating a proliferative – another word for regenerative – response from the human body.
Prolotherapy works on the principle that irritating damaged cells can stimulate the body to repair the affected area. Patients undergoing prolotherapy have injections directly into the body part with a problem.
The substance injected is usually dextrose, which is a type of sugar. This causes localized inflammation and the site near the injection can appear red in the aftermath. Some patients have reported prolotherapy side-effects that include mild pain, soreness, and irritation in the injection area.
Prolotherapy can have a beneficial effect for people suffering with painful tendons, ligaments and joints. When you compare stem cell therapy vs prolotherapy, there is one clear difference you notice straight away: the range of conditions that can be improved by prolotherapy is much narrower.
Stem Cell Therapy vs Prolotherapy – the Differences
The main difference between prolotherapy and stem cell therapy lies in the nature of the substance applied to an affected area of the body.
Whereas prolotherapy uses a type of sugar to provoke a healing response, stem cell treatment involves the application of naturally occurring human cells. At the Stemwell Clinic, we source umbilical cord stem cells that are harvested ethically from volunteer donors.
Those stem cells can then be applied to an affected body part to stimulate the healing process. This can be done intravenously or by a targeted injection. These undifferentiated umbilical cord stem cells then go to work supporting the body’s ability to heal and regenerate healthy tissue that the body requires for improved health.
As well as pain in specific areas, stem cell therapy can support improvements in less localized conditions such as osteoarthritis.
How Stemwell can Deliver the Benefits of Stem Cell Treatment
If you want to discuss the possibility of stem cell treatment for your medical condition, get in touch with us at Stemwell today. We can discuss the benefits of stem cell therapy vs prolotherapy as part of a general conversation to understand how our trained team of experts might help you.
Please get in touch so that we can begin our discussion as soon as possible.
