By Adam
One of the undying quests humanity values more than almost anything is “turning back the clock” and finding the fountain of youth.
No one wants to die, and we’ve been desperate to halt aging forever.
In the past few years, researchers have experimented with stem cell treatment to stop aging, but as attractive and effective as it is, stem cell treatment has a new rival that’s cheaper, safer, and guaranteed to work.
Why Stem Cells Aren’t Obsolete, But Won’t Be Preferred In Years to Come
In this 2-part series, we’re going to show you while the incredibly popular and incredibly expensive regenerative medicine technique known as stem cell treatment has a new rival.
This rival doesn’t necessarily supersede stem cell treatment in importance but builds on top of stem cell treatment to deliver all the benefits without the associated cost and risk.
This new treatment is called exosome therapy.
Now to understand why exosome is better than stem cell therapy, you need first to understand what stem therapy is good at and also where its disadvantages lie.
Here’s how stem cell therapy works.
Stem cells are essentially cells that are a “blank slate.”
A stem cell can become any kind of cell in the human body. Researchers inject these cells into organs in the body that can then specialize into any type of cell.
The goal of stem cell, in general, is to take an area of the body that is known to be damaged (say a torn ligament in the knee) and enhance its recovery time and regenerate new tissue to help heal the injured area in the body.
Famous athletes like Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods have used stem cells to heal broken necks and injured backs.
Multiple studies prove that stem cells can even reverse the age of damaged cells, turning them into younger, healthier cells.
These unique properties are why stem cell therapies have become so popular in the past decade.
And while the data on stem cells is beyond encouraging, what isn’t encouraging are the negative aspects of stem cell treatment.
Here’s Why Stem Cell Therapy Can’t Hold a Candle to Exosome Therapy
Stem cell therapy is undoubtedly one of the most facets of modern medicine, save the fact that it comes with significant disadvantages.
1 – Stem cells are hard to come by:
Stem cells are in minimal supply and diminish inside our bodies as we age.
The source of the most numerous number of stem cells come from fetal tissue or placenta, and harvesting from these sources doesn’t guarantee an incredibly high yield.
2 – It’s expensive:
Stem cell treatment isn’t cheap. You can expect to spend a minimum of $10,000 and upwards of $100,000 or more.
Worse yet is not that many insurances cover stem cell therapy.
3 – They have a short shelf life:
Stem cells are like baked bread.
The newer, the better. If your stem cells have been “sitting on the shelf” for a while, they may not specify into the kind of cells you’re looking to repair.
4 – Your body might reject them:
There’s a chance that even if you get new stem cells and they specify into the kind of cell you need, your body will reject them.
Because stem cells are not your DNA, there’s a chance your body will view it as a foreign invader and reject it.
5 – They can’t cross the blood-brain barrier:
One of the most significant limitations with stem cells is that they won’t cross the blood-brain barrier, meaning they are meaningless as a treatment to damaged nervous systems and brain injuries.
Exosomes, on the other hand, do all of these things and more, and we’ll cover why exosomes will quickly become the new frontier for regenerative medicine.
See Part Two Here!
