Is This Trendy Therapy Right For What Hurts?

Just a week ago, a skier friend underwent stem cell therapy for his painful knee. Ever since, he’s been sending me emails extolling the wonders of this cutting edge technology. We’re all skiers and our knees take a beating over time, so when he began singing praises about adult stem cell therapy, I took notice and became curious. Then I did some superficial homework on adult stem cell therapy. There’s good news and bad news.

Not exotic fruit, fellas. It’s a blossoming stem cell that can be used in healing senior skier joint ailments.

The good news is that adult stem cell therapy has been going on for a long time with great success for many health conditions.

However, at this time it can’t cure everything, and I learned that some conditions can be aggravated by it. Patients must pay for the procedures out of their own pockets as insurance does not seem to cover it. And sometimes it takes more than one procedure to solve or make a dent in the health problem.

Stem cell therapy is trendy and clinics are apparently springing up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. The sites I checked have flashy websites with lots of glowing testimonials. But before you jump on the bandwagon of hope, find out if the bandwagon is going where you want to go or whether it might be a pricey ride to nowhere.

So here’s the bottom line: Is adult stem cell therapy the alternative, cutting edge miracle cure for what hurts — or might it be one size fits all hype? Look before you leap. Then decide.

If you’re interested in adult stem cell therapy, the International Society for Stem Cell Research website is a place to start.

Editor’s Note: SeniorsSkiing.com Correspondent Harriet Wallis has two artificial knees, loves life and skis four days a week. She wrote the 5-part series on knee replacement for SeniorsSkiing.