The time it takes to see a result is unique for every person. We have had patients that notice changes in 2-3 weeks, and others have taken months before they noticed a change. There are too many variables to predict how soon a patient will see a result. Age, severity of degeneration, overall health and many other factors come into play.

One thing we can say is that these products always work, so long as they are good quality, live cells. The only way they do not work is if the cells injected were damaged or dead. We have had many patients come into our clinic saying they tried “stem cells” and they didn’t work. Most of the time, they can not tell us what lab these cells came from or even what quantity they received.

Regenerative medicine is very much a “buyer beware” situation, and there are a lot of clinics out there jumping on the bandwagon, buying not good products and then selling them to patients for a lot of money. Unless you have tons of money to just throw away, you should always do due diligence on the doctor’s office and the product you are getting injected, whether it’s human cellular tissue or any other product, for that matter.

Another reason why a patient may not get the anticipated result from an injection of human cellular tissue is that they may have gone to other parts of the body and fixed those first, which is why you didn’t feel the result in the area that got treated. Unfortunately, once the cells are injected into your body, we don’t have any control over where they will go. Your body controls that. These cells tend to go to areas of inflammation, since that is typically where the injuries are.

For some joints that are encapsulated, like a knee or shoulder, we can safely assume that a majority will stay in that joint, but some will go to your heart, lungs and digestive system as well. For parts of the body that are not encapsulated, such as low back/sacroiliac joint or along the facets, these areas are not encapsulated, so the cells will enter your blood stream and travel to other parts of your body.

The other common reason why a patient did not get the result they were anticipating is that there were simply not enough cells to get the job done and you need more. If a certain amount left the injection area, as I mentioned above, and the degeneration in the area being treated is severe, then it’s possible that there just was not enough product to get the job done. The solution here is to get more human cellular tissue injected in that area.