Sports and Stem Cells

My cousin and I used to love wakeboarding and we did it every weekend off the coast of Singapore for almost a year when I lived there. The thing about wakeboarding which makes it a real impact sport, is the pull of the speedboat cutting through seawater, sliding out away from the wake at a sharp angle and slicing back in to use the wake as a ramp for a jump.

Depending on how you've positioned yourself before and during the jump, your landing could be very elegant and soft, or very, very hard and bruising. The worst is probably what's called a "face-plant" where you slam face first onto the surface of the water, and you would be lucky if all you got was the wind knocked out of you without too much injury.

Many of the wakeboarders (well, not so many 11 years ago...) used to sport some injury or another, and I recall my boat driver and instructor whose knee injury was so bad that he had to wear a brace permanently and stop wakeboarding, which he loved so much.

If I had his number now, I'd certainly convince him to store his own stem cells to treat his injured knee.

I believe that applications of stem cells in sports injuries will take centerstage in the near future, simply because there isn't that much out there which assures patients that they'll really be able to get back their full range of motion after serious damage. Apart from the excruciating pain and lengthy recovery period (my cousin hurt her knee once on the board and was out of action for months), injuries are often severe enough that full form is never quite regained and the sport loses its lustre.


ENOUGH ABOUT WAKEBOARDING WHAT ABOUT THE STEM CELLS?

I read this interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about how doctors and researchers are now promoting the storage of stem cells from the umbilical cord to use in tendon, ligament, muscle and ligament repair in the few years.

Estimated timeline?

"It's not a pie in the sky notion," said Dr. Scott Rodeo, an orthopedist and research scientist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. "Maybe it's not going to happen next year, but a three-to-five year horizon is not unreasonable."

Dr. Rodeo, who is the doctor for the New York Giants football team and former US Olympic team doctor, has apparently been conducting common injury trials which do not mend easily on rats, reconstructing knees, ligament and shoulder cuffs with stem cells.


Another strong endorsement for stem cell banking:

"If you have a child who has exceptional athletic talent at the age of 5 or 6, you might want to get a muscle or fat biopsy to draw and freeze some young stem cells," said Dr. Johnny Huard, director of the Stem Cell Research Center of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and a leading gene therapy researcher. "To have a pool of stem cells already removed would be enormously valuable. The practical use might be years away, but that's the future of sports medicine."


Of course there are detractors to using stem cells as a treatment option, but frankly, if you've every played futsal or even fallen down the stairs and sprained your ankle in a life-limiting way, to me having an option is better then no option at all.

If you're a weekend athlete with an injury and would like to consider stem cell banking and therapy, please give us a call (603-2163 8800) and we'll be happy to make the arrangements for you*.


*No, you do not have to be pregnant to store your stem cells, StemLife offers Adult Stem Cell Banking for individuals who wish to use their own stem cells for their own treatment.