I would like to make a clarification regarding one or two pieces of information above (I had a telephone call earlier this week with the stem cell clinic I received my first treatment at). The clarification is:
1) It is true that stem cells will travel back to the site of injury if stem cells are harvested from body fat and re-introduced immediately afterwards. But that is also why the stem cell clinic will do what they call a "mini-liposuction" - which is not invasive and will not create the same degree of emergency response within the body. For this reason, the stem cells upon re-introduction, are not wasted in this case. It is also possible to do a proper liposuction - which will increase the amount of fat collected. This will therefore increase the number of stem cells which can harvested (> 1 billion) and hence there will be enough for 3-4 future stem cell treatments. In such a scenario, the patient will have to wait a 3-4 weeks before receiving the first batch of stem cells...
2) While the stem cell count for my first stem cell treatment was relatively low (at just 20 million stem cells), they used something called highly purified umbilical cord blood stem cells. I also received cytoplasmic peptide injections (known as growth factors) which trigger a release of the body's own stem cells from the bone marrow - and these help guide the injected stem cells to the site injury within the body (eg. liver injury, arthritis in the knee, cochlear damage, etc.). For this reason the therapy was much more focused than traditional stem cell therapy. The injected stem cells - in my case - also had a much higher replication factor due to the potency of the stem cells they use (ie. purified stem cells = higher potency than autologous stem cells harvested from body fat which contain a lot of "residue").
