Stem Cell Injections for Back Pain: Can They Help?

Americans are no strangers to pain — 1 in 5 report chronic pain, and more than 7% of adults report high-impact pain that affects their lives in significant ways. When it comes to which areas of the body experience the most chronic pain, your back ranks at, or near, the top of the list.

At Integrated Spine and Pain Care, board-certified interventional pain medicine specialist Dr. Mikael Sarij and our team understand these numbers all too well, and we’re here to help. As part of our efforts, we offer the latest science-based treatments, and we’re particularly pleased with the promising results of stem cell therapy in treating back pain.

Here’s a look at some of the more common causes of back pain, and how stem cell therapy can play a valuable role in finding much-needed relief.

Behind the back pain

As the foundational structure of your musculoskeletal system, your spine is under a good deal of stress under normal circumstances. From the moment you get out of bed, this structure is hard at work, providing support, mobility, and range of motion. Given this workload, it’s little wonder that back pain develops as much as it does.

To give you an idea of the many causes of back pain, let’s review just a few of the more prevalent, which include:

• Degenerative disc disease
• Herniated disc
• Muscle strain
• Spinal stenosis
• Arthritis
• Osteoporosis

Of course, there are other causes of back pain, but these represent most of what we see among our patients who report back pain.

Stem cells and your back pain

Our stem cell therapy is part of an exciting and growing area of our practice — regenerative medicine. Traditionally, treating back pain often came down to interventional therapies, such as surgery, and symptom management.

With regenerative medicine, our goal is to provide more sustainable and less risky solutions to back pain using the incredible regenerative powers already found in the human body, such as your stem cells.

Stem cells are what we call undifferentiated cells, which means they have the amazing ability to transform into other cells and then multiply indefinitely as that cell, creating a new line of healthy cells.

This type of regenerative approach is especially valuable in areas where your body has poor resources, such as in your cartilage and intervertebral discs. By introducing stem cells into these areas, we encourage healing and repair on a cellular level for long-lasting results.

After we inject the stem cells, they produce an immunomodulatory effect, which means they work with your immune system to reduce inflammation and pain. What really makes stem cell therapy effective is that these cells not only address the immediate problem, they help rebuild your damaged tissues for longer-lasting results.

Harvesting your own stem cells

To harness the power of stem cells, we turn to those that already exist in your body, namely in your bone marrow. Through aspiration, we collect these stem cells and redirect them into areas that need a boost in healing resources, such as the discs in your back.

If you’d like to learn more about whether stem cell therapy may hold the key to relieving your back pain, contact one of our two Long Island offices in Farmingdale or Deer Park, New York, to set up a consultation.