Joint pain can affect your daily life in a major way. It can keep you up at night, make it difficult to complete daily tasks, and even stop you from enjoying your favorite activities. Luckily, some regenerative medicine treatments can help improve your health and get rid of joint discomfort. Our team at Phoenix Regenerative Medicine in Tempe, AR, is here to help you find out which treatment is best for you.
How Can You Get Rid of Joint Pain?
Understand What It Is
Joint pain Tempe is the inflammation of one or more joints, most often accompanied by swelling. The pain can be caused by an injury, muscle overuse, or infection. It may also result from arthritis.
Find the Right Treatment
There are several options for treating joint discomfort. Depending on the cause and severity of your condition, we may recommend regenerative medicine injections such as PRP injections or administer viscosupplementation treatment. Let’s discuss these treatment methods and what makes them so effective in managing joint discomfort and pain.
Regenerative Medicine Injections
Regenerative medicine is an exciting field that aims to treat injuries with growth factors from a patient’s own blood in order to heal those tissues faster without side effects. The types of injections we may use at our office are platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and OrthoBiologics.
Platelet-rich Plasma (PRP) Injections
PRP treatment is a technique where we take your blood and process it to concentrate the platelets. Platelets are cells in the body that produce growth factors that help stimulate tissue regeneration, healing, and repair. The concentrated PRP injection contains these powerful proteins and other vital blood components – all at much higher concentrations than you have naturally. This way, the injections can promote more rapid healing.
OrthoBiologics Injections
OrthoBiologics are special proteins found naturally in the body that help reduce inflammation, promote healing, and stimulate tissue regeneration. By injecting concentrated natural molecules to an injured site within a few days of injury or surgery, OrthoBiologics can speed up your recovery process by kick-starting the production of collagen. Collagen is essential for healthy tendons, ligaments, and joints.
The injections work best when administered directly into the damaged area. This ensures high concentrations at the source of injury while also reaching surrounding tissues to provide even better benefits.
Viscosupplementation
Viscosupplementation, also known as hyaluronic acid (HA) injection, is a non-surgical injection process used to treat joint discomfort caused by osteoarthritis. Viscosupplementation works in two ways: by stopping the thinning of cartilage in knee joints and restoring lubricative properties in worn-out joints. HA is a natural component found within a healthy joint fluid and acts as a lubricant between joints. It allows for pain-free movement by keeping friction low during physical activity.
In What Ways Can Viscosupplementation Help Me?
Patients who have tried other treatments without success may consider viscosupplementation injections as an alternative or a complementary treatment approach. Viscosupplementations are also beneficial if you are looking for relief from mild discomfort caused by osteoarthritis and want to avoid the risks involved in taking steroids over long periods. The ideal candidate would also be someone with moderate-to-severe joint wear but who doesn’t consider surgery as an option.
After treatment, our team will request periodic follow-up visits to monitor your progress and determine if the treatment has been effective. From the initial consultation to injection administration, the entire process takes about 30 to 45 minutes depending on how many areas need treatment.
6 Benefits of Regenerative Medicine
There’re many benefits to regenerative medicine. The following are just a few of the most common:
1. Helps One Avoid Surgery
When a patient has joint discomfort or arthritis, regenerative medicine therapy is able to repair cartilage and tissue. This would prevent patients from having to undergo surgery for their joints to function properly again.
2. Minimal Recovery Time
Another benefit to regenerative medicine is that it has a minimal recovery time. This form of treatment can be done right in our doctor’s office, so the patient only needs to spend about an hour at our medical center.
3. Healing Happens Faster
Surgery is a traumatic process for the body, which also takes longer to heal. Regenerative medicine treatments are minimally invasive and do not require cutting or stitching, so patients experience less pain after their treatment. This allows the healing process to happen more quickly than with traditional surgery methods.
4. It’s Low Risk Since You Use Your Own Body Cells
Regenerative medicine uses your own body cells, so there’s no risk for an allergic reaction or rejection.
5. It Treats Delicate and Difficult to Reach Areas
PRP treatments can be used to treat joints in the spine, hands, and feet that are difficult or impossible for surgeons to reach. This is especially useful for patients who require multiple surgeries or have had previous procedures fail.
6. Results are Long-Lasting
The results from a PRP treatment or viscosupplementation can last for years. The ability to use your own regenerative cells to heal bones and cartilage makes the outcome much more effective than traditional surgeries that use synthetic materials instead of body cells.
What Causes Joint Pain?
There are many possible causes of joint discomfort, such as:
- Osteoarthritis
- Arthritis
- Injury
- Gout
- Bone tumors
- Sarcoidosis
- Lupus
- Ligament injury/rupture
A ligament is a rope-like band that connects bone to bone and holds joints together. When it gets overstretched or torn, then we get immense joint discomfort with difficulty moving that joint. Any kind of joint injury requires immediate medical attention, so please visit our office here in Tempe so we can find out what’s causing your discomfort.
Symptoms of Joint Pain
The most common symptom of joint discomfort is pain. It can be intermittent or continuous, mild to severe, and vary in location. This pain often fluctuates over time as well, with periods of remission followed by flare-ups or exacerbations.
Other symptoms include:
- Stiffness after rest which disappears within a few minutes
- Aches around joints, especially when touched
- Swelling at the affected area
- Painful movements such as bending down
How a Pain Diagnosis Is Made
During the consultation, we will ask you questions about your joint discomfort and symptoms. We will also perform a physical examination, looking for swollen joints and checking whether you have tenderness or weakness in the muscles around those areas. We will also check for overlying skin changes such as redness, warmth, or color change.
We can diagnose arthritis by taking a detailed history of your condition combined with any physical findings during the examination. Blood tests involving inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein (CRP) can provide supportive evidence that inflammation is present within affected joints. We might also carry out a synovial fluid analysis to look for specific markers that can help us diagnose a certain type of joint discomfort.
Home Remedies for Managing Joint Pain
In addition to seeking professional help, there are a number of additional ways that you can help to manage your pain. Some of these methods include:
Stay Physically Active
Staying physically active is a great way to help with joint discomfort. You can do this by joining some type of exercise program or playing sports as long as you don’t overdo it and cause further damage to the joints.
Warm-Up Before Exercising
Before you begin exercising, it’s important to warm up your joints. You can do this by simply taking a five-minute walk or doing some gentle stretching of the joint that’s hurting. This helps loosen up your muscles and joints to help reduce discomfort once you begin exercising.
Manage Your Body Weight
Being overweight puts added stress on your joints, which can worsen discomfort and cause additional problems that you might not have had before.
Stay Well-Hydrated
Staying hydrated helps keep the cartilage and tissues in your joints healthy, preventing damage to those areas over time. Staying hydrated also ensures your joints are flexible and can move smoothly without pain.
Heat Therapy
Using heat therapy to relax tight muscles can help reduce discomfort in your joints. When you feel pain, apply a heating pad or warm compress directly to the area for about 15 minutes at least twice per day.
Cold Therapy
Applying ice to areas with pain can help reduce swelling and inflammation. Ice helps reduce pressure on the affected area, ultimately decreasing discomfort.
Improve Your Joint Pain Today!
The above treatments are effective in alleviating joint discomfort and improving function. The results of these treatments are long-lasting, and patients can expect pain relief for several months to years after treatment. Visit us at Phoenix Regenerative Medicine in Tempe, AR, to learn more about these treatments and other minimally invasive therapies.
