Medical tourism is rapidly gaining popularity throughout the world. Patients who are frustrated with the exorbitant costs of the United States healthcare system have begun to look to other countries for their healthcare. They are also frustrated with the lack of results of conventional medicine. Thankfully, medical tourism plus a new form of medical treatment is giving new hope to patients.
Stem cell therapy is a beacon of light in the world of medicine. Patients who could not get effective treatment now could potentially improve their condition. Unfortunately, stem cell therapy is heavily regulated by the FDA. Patients are forced to look to other countries to receive the most innovative treatments. Panama has stepped up to patients that are looking for stem cell therapy. Before getting into Panama, let us discuss all the exciting ways stem cell therapy can help your condition.
Why Stem Cells?
Stem cells are taking the world by storm and offering scientists and researchers the opportunity to revolutionize medical care in the modern age. While many patients may have heard of stem cell therapy, most patients do not understand the gravity of its capabilities. Stem cell therapy offers a new way of care that can make life much easier for patients in need.
Stem cell therapy is a form of regenerative medical care and while there are other regenerative medical practices, none are as efficient or as effective as stem cell therapy is. The reasons why stem cells are so effective are numerous and there continue to be more and more applicable uses that scientists discover every day. Stem cell therapy has not only seen a growth in its uses, it has also received a large boost in popularity thanks to the many celebrity and athlete endorsements that the method has managed to accumulate recently.
Of the many examples of athletes who have received stem cell therapy, some of the most notable include Peyton Manning, Rafael Nadal, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods, Steph Curry, and Cristiano Ronaldo. These are all athletes who are stars in their respective sports and their decision to undergo stem cell therapy for treatment rather than the more traditional methods available landed a lot of credibility to stem cells.
Yet still, even with these endorsements, many patients are not sure what stem cell therapy can treat exactly. That is a question that is hard to answer due to the constantly evolving landscape of this still quickly developing field of study. Three of its core uses are for physical ailments, neurological ailments, and matters of the immune system.
What Types of Physical Ailments
Stem cells have proven that they are invaluable when a patient is dealing with physical ailments. This is commonly related to injury and is also why stem cell therapy is so prevalent among athletes. Stem cells are able to change into the kind of cells your body needs at a given time which can allow them to serve the wide variety of functions that they serve in treatment. Stem cell therapy can be a very enticing alternative to surgery for many patients, regardless of whether they are athletes or now.
This is because stem cell therapy allows for patients to avoid many of the negative side effects associated with having a surgical procedure. While this is true of your entire body, it is especially valuable to parts of the body that are notoriously challenging to rehabilitate such as your back, knees, or shoulders. After a patient undergoes a surgery, it can be many months or even years before their body has regained the functionality it previously had.
Over this time, the patient likely must deal with pain and a loss of function or mobility. Stem cell therapy helps to avoid these drawbacks. Stem cell procedures are much quicker than surgical ones. Where surgery may take a few hours, stem cell injections take only a few minutes. The recovery process also is much shorter and less painful. After stem cell therapy, it is likely to only be a matter of weeks or a few months before your body begins to improve to a point where it is comparable to its functionality before the injury. Furthermore, it is highly likely that your body will come back just as strong, or possibly stronger than it was before the procedure. T
This is very different from a surgical outcome as surgery is much less likely to return a patient to their full strength and function from before their injury and if they do get back to that point, it is usually only after a very long and arduous rehabilitation process. Lastly, surgery can fail and leave a patient in more pain or needing a second procedure, but this is incredibly unlikely when using stem cell therapy. Since stem cells help to naturally regenerate areas that have been damaged, it is much more likely that they help you heal without the risk of reinjuring the area. While this all may be a very convincing case for stem cells, it is also only one of the uses for stem cell therapy.
While they are extremely helpful for patients who are suffering from injuries, they can help patients with other physical ailments that did not come about due to an injury. One of the most common diseases treated with stem cell therapy is rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis is incurable and all that can be done for a patient is helping to manage their pain. While stem cells cannot cure the condition, they can make a patient’s life many orders of magnitude better by helping to quell their arthritis. Part of this is thanks to the powerful anti-inflammatory effect that stem cells can have on the body. They are great for easing pain alongside cultivating a healthier body. There are many physical ailments that stem cells have been demonstrated to be able to help and every day, researchers are finding more and more ways to apply stem cells to the body.
What Neurological Disorders?
Another way that stem cells have become vital to medical care is for their utility with neurological disorders as well. Stem cell therapy has been able to be put to good use to help patients who are suffering from diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s. It can also help patients who are suffering from nerve pain or brain damage.
The healing ability of stem cells can help to kick start the necessary functions in the body to help fight back against these diseases and many more like it. This is an area of stem cell therapy that is still being heavily researched so that doctors can better understand how it works and can be applied, but it has already shown a great deal of promise. Stem cells may be able to help you with whatever disease you are facing, even if it is one that you catch.
Stem cells have been put to the test against various viruses and bacteria and it continues to win. Recently, researchers have been working to assess how effective stem cells can be in the fight against COVID-19. While it will still be a long time before any of the clinical trials are fully complete and ready for publication, preliminary data is already showing that stem cell therapy can be an amazingly effective way to fight the virus.
Immune System
Another virus that stem cell therapy has already been shown to greatly help improve a patient’s chances of recovery is pneumonia. This is a chronic complication of COVID-19, but stem cells have been able to decrease how long it affects a patient as well as decrease the likelihood that a patient will not recover. This is in part due to the anti-inflammatory processes within stem cells. By reducing the inflammation in the chest that these respiratory viruses cause, a patient is much better equipped to fight off the virus and they will be in less pain as well.
Stem cells can give the immune system a jump start and help to get the white blood cells in your body into fighting shape. In doing all of this, stem cell therapy may be the best method of fighting illnesses in the future. While this also still needs to be researched quite a bit, it has also shown great promise and for this reason, many stem cell clinics even offer an IV drip of stem cells which can help to boost a patient’s immune system. This can be invaluable to immunocompromised patients as they can utilize a stem cell IV to get added protection against any sickness they may encounter.
Cosmetic Care
While these are the main medical uses for stem cell therapy, it has one more bonus ability and that is its use in cosmetic care. Stem cells have quickly proven to be exceptionally good at helping patients achieve aesthetic goals such as rejuvenating their skin or helping their hair to grow. Although this field is not the main one for stem cell therapy, it is quickly becoming much more popular as patients see that stem cell-based cosmetics can offer its own many positive benefits compared to more conventional methods.
Due to all these factors, stem cells have quickly become a force to be reckoned with in the medical field and have led patients to travel all over the world in order to receive stem cell care.
The Growing Industry of Stem Cell Medical Tourism
Medical tourism is not a new industry. Travelling to receive better care than what is available to you where you live is something that patients have had to do for many years. While the proliferation of high-quality medical care and equipment have made it so that it is not as prevalent as it may have been in the past, traveling to receive your care is still not too uncommon.
Now, one of the major driving factors of medical tourism around the world is stem cell therapy. This is because every country differs widely on what they offer. In the US, it can even vary from state to state, with each one having its own manner of dictating your access to care. Because of how much of a challenge it can be in some places to receive the medical care that patients deserve, they look elsewhere in the world to see if they could receive the care there instead. One such place that patients have begun to travel to receive care is Panama.
Is It Legal in Panama?
Not only is stem cell therapy legal in Panama, it is quickly becoming one of the global leaders in research of non-surgical therapeutic options for care. Unlike the United States, which strictly regulates the usage of stem cells within its borders, Panama is encouraging the further research and development of stem cells in order to help make the world a better place and improve the health of patients everywhere. As Panama continues to grow its stem cell field, it could position itself as a global leader of this revolutionary kind of care. This could also lead to an influx of patients going to the country, which could further benefit both the country itself and the patients in need of quality medical care.
The Culture in Panama
When a patient thinks of Panama, it is unlikely that their first thoughts will be of their medical care infrastructure in place. Panama is known for its beautiful beaches as well as the Panama Canal. It is a mix of Spanish and indigenous culture that gives the country its unique beauty and feel. If you are considering going to Panama for medical care, it may be helpful for you to know some Spanish.
While much of the country’s economy may be derived from fruit and fishing, they are looking to expand this into the medical market and to make themselves a country that patients can go to in order to receive high quality medical care and then relax on the beach after their procedure is complete. While it may take quite some time for Panama to achieve this, they are already actively laying the foundation and preparing themselves for what may come next.
Problems with Stem Cell Therapy in Panama
Although Panama is working to become a global leader in the stem cell field, they are still quite far from achieving this. Panama is a small country that has a population around 4 million. Although this does not make it the smallest country in Central America, it does come close. With such a small population, it should not be a surprise that there are quite few stem cell clinics within Panama currently.
It simply does not have a population that is able to sustain a large number of clinics on their own. While they are still working hard to research stem cells and are still courting the global community in an effort to become the next medical tourist destination, they still are not quite capable of this. They only have a handful of clinics and while the country may be attempting to bolster its research efforts so that it can grow in this market.
The country is not yet at that point and will have a great deal of work to do before it can be ready for medical tourists to start arriving on its shores in masses. Also, the head of the Stem Cell Institute in Panama has a PhD in health sciences, rather than being run by a surgeon as many stem cell clinics elsewhere in the world are. Although not all of this must be a deal breaker, it can certainly leave a patient considering what options they have besides Panama, such as the United States or elsewhere.
Can You Go to The US Instead?
The United States is not one of the better places globally to receive stem cell therapy. This is due to how strictly the US regulates stem cells and clinics. When stem cells first started to become mainstream, they were a fringe medical practice that were a bit of a taboo. They slowly grew in popularity and shook this ill-conceived notion, but that did not mean that things were going to quickly get easier.
Even with the many celebrity and athlete endorsements, as well as the millions of satisfied patients worldwide, the United States remains firm in its heavy regulation of the stem cell industry. This over regulation stifles the growth and development of stem cell treatments in America. The regulation problem is caused by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This is because the FDA has classified stem cells as a drug which then gives them the control to regulate the industry.
Many advocates for stem cell therapy say that the government should not be regulated stem cells in the same manner it regulates drugs because stem cells are derived from a patient’s body and do not cause the many harmful side effects that drugs can cause in a patient. Although there are complications that are possible with stem cell therapy, these are exceedingly rare and unlikely to be life threatening. Still, the US heavily regulates stem cells which decreases the ability to innovate in the field and makes it much harder for patients to get the care that they deserve.
This regulation causes an added effect because due to its general lack of approval from the FDA, except in certain uses, it is not covered by many patients' insurance policies. This means that patients who are looking to get their stem cell care in the US will have to pay for the entirety of their care out of pocket. For those costs, a patient could just pack up their things and go somewhere else in the world in order to receive care that is likely to be even better than that which they would receive in the US.
Where Else Can You Go?
While there may be places all around the world for a patient to go to in order to receive stem cell therapy, the best option for anyone looking for high quality care that won’t break the bank and will have you satisfied for long after is BioXcellerator. While BioXcellerator is primarily based in the US, they saw a need for patients who needed better care than what the US was allowing them to receive.
For this reason, they set up a clinic in Colombia to help take care of everyone who needs it. Colombia is an exceptionally good choice for stem cell care because much like Panama, the study and advancement of stem cell therapy is highly encouraged there. The field is not over regulated like it is in the United States, which allows for innovation and development that might not be able to be made in the US. While there are various stem cell clinics in Colombia, BioXcellerator has made sure that the clinic in Colombia is to the highest standard that the global community could offer.
No matter where in the world you have traveled, you will be able to receive high quality stem cell therapy and you will be made to feel at home in the process. This is a much better option than going to Panama for a few reasons. The first of those being that the BioXcellerator facility in Colombia is a cutting edge, top of the line facility that most others cannot compete with, It is also run by a medical staff including surgeons, unlike the Panamanian clinic. This can also help to ensure that you get a high a high standard of care. Travelling around the world for medical care is a huge process and when doing so, it is important that you are getting the most quality care the world has to offer. That care can be found at BioXcellerator in Colombia.
Medical tourism lends itself well to stem cell therapy due to the varied way that stem cells are legislated worldwide. While governments might still be heavily regulating their stem cell market, patients are going to seek out the best care that they can, even if it is somewhere else in the world. Patients deserve to have high quality care that ensures their health and safety and there are many countries and clinics that are vying for your support.
Panama is far from being the only country that wants to boost its medical tourism prowess, but it still has a great deal of work to do before it can really be a highly sought-after stem cell destination. For now, there is a clear clinic that stands a cut above the rest. BioXcellerator in Colombia wants to give you the care that you deserve and help to get your quality of life up to where it should be. Clinics all over the world may want you to come to them, but none have the record, the prowess, and the results that can be found at BioXcellerator.
