Frozen shoulder, or adhesive capsulitis, explicitly targets the shoulder’s joint capsule and drastically reduces the range of motion. Unfortunately, when you experience a frozen shoulder, your treatment options are minimal, especially if you have coexisting conditions, such as arthritis.
Frozen shoulder symptoms can last a year or longer and may become permanent, significantly affecting your quality of life.
What Is Frozen Shoulder?
The shoulder is unlike any other joint in the body, as it possesses the greatest range of motion but is also the most vulnerable to injury. Also known as the synovial joint, the shoulder is a ball and socket joint encapsulated through connective tissue and lubricated with synovial fluid.
Injuries to the shoulder almost always affect the joint’s capsule. When patients experience a frozen shoulder, the connective tissue that allows the shoulder to lift becomes inflamed and irritated, making the shoulder feel stuck, as though the tissue is sticking together.
What Is Stem Cell Therapy?
Stem cells are naturally present in the body throughout your lifetime. They are often called immature cells, as they don’t serve a specific function until they’re needed. However, when the body experiences damage, stem cells have the unique ability to differentiate, dividing to create two specialized cells, such as muscle or blood cells.
Stem cell therapy extracts stem cells from the patient and then reintroduces them to the damaged site of the body. Stem cells can then divide and differentiate to repair and replace damaged tissue.
How Does Stem Cell Therapy Treat Frozen Shoulder?
Patients suffering from frozen shoulder often have few treatment options beyond medications to mask the pain or steroid injections, which can alleviate the pain but cause long-term damage to the cartilage and tissue of the joint.
Stem cells possess anti-inflammatory properties, helping to alleviate tension in the frozen shoulder as they trigger the body’s healing response. Once introduced to the damaged tissue, stem cells can then differentiate into the cells necessary to repair the injury.
The stem cells work to heal the irritated tissue of the shoulder where they have become inflamed enough to impair movement and restore the shoulder’s strength and range of motion.
As the symptoms of a frozen shoulder often persist for 18 months to three years, therapy such as regenerative medicine that may promote healing and allow patients to move their shoulders comfortably again may be worth exploring for those searching for an alternative option.
This post was written by a medical professional at Stemedix Inc. At Stemedix we provide access to Regenerative Medicine for Orthopedic also known as Orthopedic Stem cell Therapy. Regenerative medicine has the natural potential to help improve symptoms sometimes lost from the progression of many conditions.
