We all wondered where K.J. write went off to last week. Got the answer today. He had this treatment- will play Friday.
Kobe Bryant did it. Alex Rodriguez did it. Golfer Fred Couples did it, even the late Pope John Paul II did it. There’s a new, yet unproven treatment for pain that people will pay out of pocket for and then travel to Germany where the treatment is not obstructed by FDA regulations. It’s called Regenokine and it’s one type of a group of treatments called “biologic medicine” in which a person’s own tissue is collected, processed in a particular way, and then placed back into the body. Biologics are based on the philosophy of using the body’s own healing power to cure, but despite its growing popularity among professional athletes and ‘weekend warriors,’ the benefits – and safety – of the treatments are far from proven.
Regenokine is used to relieve lower back pain and the pain caused by osteoarthritis. At the time Fred Couples received treatment he was suffering from severe arthritic back pain. But when he won the PGA Senior Players Championship in 2011 he attributed the victory to Regenokine, saying he felt better than he had in a decade. The Regenokine treatment involves extracting the blood and then slightly heating it. The heat creates a kind of “fever” for the blood, inducing the inflammation that is a normal healing mechanism for the body. The blood is then put in a tube and spun in a centrifuge which separates the blood into its constituent parts. A layer of red blood cells collect at the bottom of the tube, a yellowish layer forms above it. The yellowish serum contains the good stuff, now-concentrated cytokines that fight inflammation and proteins that promote good health and block pain. After being injected back into the patient, the serum brings immediate pain relief to most patients. In others it can take several weeks. The feel good effects are effective in about 75 percent of patients and typically last two to four years.
All of this is according to the very small group of physicians that administer Regenokine.
Drs. Peter Wehling and Jens Hartmann run a practice in Düsseldorf, Germany that is the premiere source for the treatment. Wehling, a spinal surgeon, developed the Regenokine program in collaboration with scientists and physicians in the US and Europe. It has not received FDA approval in the US yet due to a requirement that body tissues be “minimally manipulated,” lest they become classified as drugs and subject to much more strict regulations. Despite this, however, there is at least one physician trying his luck in the US. Chris Renna, who runs a pair of clinics, one in Dallas and one in Santa Monica, offers Regenokine to his patients, only “slightly concerned” that the FDA would take action against him.
The comparatively laissez-faire regulations of Europe means people like Wehling and Hartmann are free to provide one more option to chronic pain patients who have tried everything. The 75 percent effectiveness rate would definitely sound like a miracle to patients for which drugs, physical therapy, acupuncture, etc. doesn’t work. But could Regenokine’s potency come more from patients’ wishful thinking than from anti-inflammatories? Could the pain relief really be just a placebo effect?
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