Injecting Stem Cells Into The Discs Relieves Back Pain But Does Not Increase Disc Height

A recent message that I got was from a regular reader who stated that besides wanting to be tall, they were also interested in the content of the website because their were suffering from back pain from compressed discs. I had said that we have already found multiple ideas, techniques, and patents which have been shown to work in decompressing the discs.

Let me show the readers what we are talking about. First, if you are looking for ideas on how to find the cutting edge of technology on how to treat compressed IVDs, just google terms like “spinal disc decompression” into Google Patents and you would find dozens of viable ideas. The problem is that these ideas, because they are patented means that other people can’t actually go ahead and build those devices in the patent. Licensing the rights to build the devices proposed in patents require paying licensing fees in the 5 digits.

However, lets’ see what the company Regenexx have been saying about using stem cells to increase disc height. (Source available here). They’ve been trying to use this idea of injecting stem cells into the nucleus pulposus area of the discs to increase the disc width since the 2006-2007 time frame. They’ve already put millions into the researcher. So has this company called Mesoblasts, which might have even put as much as hundreds of millions.

The original study which was even cited in the Business Standard website entitled “New stem cell transplant holds promise for treatment of degenerative disc disease” said that at least in animal testing groups, there was a statistically significant increase in disc height for around 25% of all animals that were tested. (You can look up the research by typing in the term “Wenchun Qu, M.D., Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota” into Google and looking up his research.)

So injecting stem cells into test animals lead them to have longer torsos/bodies. However, that result was not able to be translated into human beings.

The injections of stem cells into the backs of adult humans did NOT increase the disc height.

I quote what Regenexx states below…

“ We tried to replicate these animal studies as far back as 2006-7 and it failed miserably. Not a single patient saw a significant increase in disc height.”

Here is what the author states are the two primary reasons…

Reason 1: We humans are bipedal and the lab animals tested like mice or rabbits walk on all fours. ie there is less weight per area the discs are subjected to.

Reason 2: While the decrease in disc height in humans is most often due to chronic, slow biochemical process, which takes years, what happens to the animals in the lab, which have their nucleus pulposus instantly removed and have stem cells implanted just a dramatically.

So here is the good news for people suffering from back pain or decompressed discs which are chronic in nature.

Stem cells injections will decrease back pain. – It will remove disc bulges 

The good thing to understand is that at the end of the message, the writer at Regenexx states that we will absolutely eventually get stem cells to work in increasing disc height, just now right now. I guess we need to wait another 20 years before that type of thing finally starts to happen.