Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy? Ahoy!

In today's post, I'll be writing about the only thing you should find more scintillating than the latest fitness and nutrition studies. In other words, I'll be writing about me.

Regular Nerd Herders might recall that 2011 was a real injury odyssey for me, the crescendo being surgury on my hip and shoulder spaced a couple months apart. I'm doing much better here in 2012, except for my elbow, where I'm on month 15 of a lateral epicondylitis jag. A couple of cortisone shots got me through the surgeries with a functioning arm, but other than that, nothing has helped.

What makes this injury really odd is that I don't play tennis or any other sport that really stresses the area. Furthermore, surgery forced me to take a looooooooong break from my regularly scheduled activities such as surfing, yoga, and general tomfoolery. Technically, that should have helped. Odds are, typing probably aggravates it, but homeboy ain't gonna stop keyboardin', so that'll need to be a workaround.

The medical community has thrown all kinds of theories at me, ranging from my physical therapist who feels it's a dodgy disk in my neck pinching nerves, to my orthopod who simply thinks it's a really shitty case of tennis elbow. Even my acupuncturist, who has an aptitude for working miracles, concedes that there's not much he can do about it.

But I've never been one to accept defeat. In fact, I except defeat. Where others will be defeated, I'll be the exception. (Anyone who slaps that on a t-shirt owes me 15%.) So today I'm trying something new and super groovy. It's called platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy. While the Giant Baby Man in me isn't looking forward to having a couple more needles poked in my arm, the Fitness Nerd in me is stoked to be taking part in some cutting edge science.

PRP therapy has been around since the nineties, but has only recently come into vogue for sports-related injuries, with folks like Tiger Woods looking to it as a solution. The idea is that they draw some of your blood and stir it up to activate the platelet-rich plasma, separate it from the rest of the blood, then inject it back into the injured area. Platelets are clear cell fragments that promote healing and growth. Dr. Dennis Cardone explained the benefit of this to Scientific American:

Theoretically, many of the athletes may have a type of tendonitis, [such as] Achilles tendonitis or, say, patellar tendonitis in the knee or tennis elbow. Many of these tendon injuries become chronic, and involve microscopic tearing of the tendon and formation of scar tissue. A reason why it's difficult to heal these tendon injuries is related to poor blood supply to the region. The perfect example would be the Achilles. It's a tendon with, in general, a poor blood supply, so when there are these microscopic tears or chronic scarring, the body has a difficult time healing it. The theory is that the body can't on its own get enough of these healing or growth factors to the area, but now this concentrated platelet injected there just enhances the nutrients and growth factors to allow the body to heal it.

See? Sounds rad, huh? As that article details, there's a dearth of credible research for PRP therapy, but there's a ton of anecdotal evidence supporting it and ultimately, you're just injecting yourself with your own blood, which is infinitely more benign then surgery or loading up on xenobiotics. IMHO, it's worth a try. In an industry where pharmaceuticals are becoming increasing popular despite growing evidence of how problematic they can be, it's refreshing to see Western medicine pushing something like this. I almost feel like I'm taking a moral stand by trying it.

The only downside is that, because it's such a new therapy, insurance companies don't support it, so I'm  shelling out $500. Normally, I'm not much of a gambling man. As I mentioned earlier, if it is indeed my spine that's the problem and not the actual tendon, I'm basically betting on a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest, but whatever. After 15 months of wincing in pain every time I itch my nose, I'm ready to put my money on Long John Silver. He seems pretty bad-ass to me.

I'll keep you posted.