Here is the full transcript of sports medicine doctor Anthony Galea’s talk titled “Get Your Body To Heal Itself” at TEDxIUM 2014 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
I haven’t rehearsed this part of my TED talk, and you’ll know why in a second. I’m going to take this needle, and I’m going to stab my finger. And I’m going to take this tiny drop of blood and place it on this slide. What you’ll see, even though this drop of blood is extremely small, within it exists an entire universe.
Our blood is made up of a wide variety of cells, ranging from red blood cells that carry oxygen to the working muscle, the white blood cells that protect us from infection, to the platelets that heal our wounds, and the plasma which carry these important cells, as well as nutrients, proteins, and hormones, along a complex highway of blood vessels to every tissue in our body.
I am a sports medicine physician, and I try to bring physical change to reality. Over the last 25 years, I’ve dealt with a wide variety of sport and recreational injuries. 25 years ago, as a young physician, the treatment focused around what is known as the RICE formula, standing for rest, ice, compression, and elevation. We also had certain medications at our disposal, such as the anti-inflammatory drugs, homeopathics, and injections like cortisone.
It perplexed me that these therapists had this magic spray that would cure all injuries on contact with the skin, which I never could get my hands on. However, the results were short-lived, and the side effects of the medications ranged from bleeding stomach ulcers to ruptured tendons.
The Birth of Regenerative Medicine
Due to the pressure from my athletes, both professional and recreational, children, their parents, coaches, who just wanted another way to heal and another way to get back to what they love to do. What if there was another way, an alternative way? A way which would utilize the power of our own bodies to heal? A way which would minimize the use of medications and improve recovery time?
Could we, you and I, make our own medication? Can we become our own pharmaceutical company? Thus, the birth of a new field known as regenerative medicine, based on the three fundamental pillars, the messengers of signaling proteins, scaffolds, and stem cells.
Due to the pressure from my athletes to find an alternative way, in early 2000, I started taking a little bit of blood, and I would put it in a centrifuge for a small amount of time, and at a certain speed, in order to concentrate these healing cells known as platelets. I then would take the super-concentrated load of platelets and inject it into the damaged tissue, such as muscle, tendon, and ligaments.
These messenger proteins, or signaling proteins, are also known as growth factors, cytokines, and hormones. They’re produced by blood cells and exist within the plasma. But collectively, they work like a construction crew. Some are plumbers, electricians, bricklayers. In response to injury, they go to work repairing damaged muscle, tendon, and ligaments. They would also control the inflammatory process itself.
Successful Results and Limitations
The results were quite interesting. I got healing in half the time. Minimal scarring. Earlier return to play, with minimal side effects. I was obtaining results with this form of treatment that I never did with any other form of treatment. In the above example, we see one of the world’s top figure skaters. In 2009, just before the Winter Olympic Games, he sustained a small tear in his calf muscle, which you can see by the arrow behind me. Normally, such an injury would prevent the athlete from performing well at such a competition.
However, by taking a little bit of blood, extracting out the concentrated platelets, and you can see the needle marked X, injecting it into the tear, the muscle went on to heal, and he placed in the top five during those Olympic Games. However, the messengers, or the signaling proteins through the platelets, have limitations.
Anya Balbir, we heard this morning, was one of the world’s top ten mogul skaters. She now lives and works just outside the Monaco area. One of the injuries during her career was a tear of a tendon just below the kneecap, known as the patellar tendon. You can see a big black hole in her tendon. The question was, could I repair this tendon by using the platelets? Well, the answer, no.
The reason, if I took the platelet load and injected it into that hole, it would just keep going right through. There was nothing to hold it in place long enough to repair the tendon. I needed a scaffold of some sort. Something that would hold these workers in place long enough to repair the tendon.
The Role of Scaffolds and Stem Cells
By doing a little process known as a micro-liposuction, and taking a little bit of fat, processing that fat, and injecting it back into the tendon, I had my scaffold. So you can see here some live footage. The needle’s going in the hole, and I’m filling up the space with the fat. Then, I’m going to take my platelets, I’m going to inject it in the scaffold. That scaffold will hold the platelets in long enough to repair the tendon.
So this opened up a whole new world of possibilities that I was able to treat. Such as, this is a tear in the rotator cuff, a small tendon in the shoulder. I can now put a scaffold, seat it with the platelets, and repair that tendon. The third essential pillar for healing are stem cells. These small cells are undifferentiated, but have the ability to specialize into other forms of tissue, such as bone and cartilage, fat and muscle, heart, blood vessels, and nerve. They’re easily obtained from our bone marrow or fat that exists throughout the body.
However, these stem cells do other functions that many people don’t know about.