How I Cured My Heavy Legs in 10 Minutes

I had heavy legs. It felt a bit like slogging through mud. The spring in my step was gone, and while I would do OK once I got going a bit, no amount of working out or strengthening or stretching would help. Then I had my heavy legs fixed with a simple injection in my back. In ten minutes it was gone, and lots of other things got better as well. What was going on and how could a quick injection fix a problem that had been plaguing me for six months?

My Heavy Legs

While a lot of my patients know what this is like, having heavy legs is sometimes difficult to explain to someone who has never had this issue. It feels a bit like someone has tied weights to your legs. The legs work, but some activities feel like you’re moving through mud. The spring in your step goes away. You can no longer “bound” upstairs; instead, you work a bit with each step.

My Fix

The other day I had had enough, so I had my clinic draw some blood from my arm and process the platelets in such a way that the healing growth factors were isolated. This is important, as while platelets are normally the little guys in blood that help it clot, they also help in wound healing, so they’re chock-filled with growth factors. Once these were isolated, I had one of my physician partners precisely inject around the S1 spinal nerves in my back (S1 transforaminal epidural). How did I know that I needed the S1 nerves injected? I have a central L5–S1 disc bulge that can irritate the nerves and the chronic tightness in my hamstrings and calves (where the S1 nerves go).

I went to work out with my personal trainer that night about 45 minutes after the injection. He was literally blown away. We were gingerly working around my easily aggravated back and lack of power in my core, which impacted how much I could lift. In fact, I had also been starting to strengthen my back muscles using a Roman Chair, but I needed to use my hands to support my back. This is that piece of equipment where you face down with a pad under your tummy and flex toward the floor and use your back muscles to extend, like a reverse sit-up.

All throughout the workout, my trainer had a hard time with how this injection had so dramatically changed the fragile older guy he had been helping. First, all of my weights were up about 25%. This is because my back and neck were no longer easily getting tweaked handling the heavier weights. In addition, I promptly got on the Roman Chair and ripped off 20 reps without using my hands, which placed the final hand grenade in his brain, as he had never seen me do that before. The next day, I came to work and ran up the stairs (like I used to) for the first time in six months.

How Did This Instant Change Happen?

To understand what happened, you need to learn a bit of basic anatomy first. The nerves in your low back tell your muscles what to do. If the nerves in the back are not happy, you may or may not feel back pain, but you will feel all sorts of issues in the legs. Sometimes this is numbness and tingling, and sometimes it’s just tightness in specific muscles. In addition, because the muscles aren’t efficiently contracting, the legs can feel heavy, and since the same nerves power little muscles deep in your core (multifidus), these muscles can go offline, causing other bigger muscles to have to take up the load. Finally, the spinal discs, joints, and ligaments can become unstable and sloppy. Basically, a core that never works well to support the power in your arms and legs.

When the injection around the S1 nerves calmed them down, suddenly the muscles powered by those nerves in my legs were getting good signals again. In addition, my core muscles were as well. All of this allowed me to handle more weight. Why? Think about trying to lift weights on an unstable boat in a lake. It would be twice as hard without stable support. Now think about lifting weights in the same boat when it’s firmly stable on land—you could lift much more.

How Could Platelet Growth Factors Chill Out Pissed-Off Nerves so Quickly?

The growth factors in platelets and the cytokines in serum are pretty cool. Some of these, like A2M and IRAP, are very anti-inflammatory and work very quickly to reduce swelling. Some are pro-growth and can build things like new blood vessels or even help new nerves sprout over weeks. So the initial effects I saw were likely due to anti-inflammatory cytokines in the serum. Finally, just the volume of fluid injected around the nerves likely diluted some of the inflammatory chemicals that were living there, causing immediately happier nerves.

The upshot? I should have had this injection months ago, but you know the saying: “The cobbler’s son has no shoes”! Sometimes we doctors just get too busy to help ourselves! In the meantime, I don’t miss my heavy legs one bit!

I’ve blogged a few times on patient JS. I’ve been treating him on/off for 16 years for various problems. This week I’m treating him at our licensed site in Grand Cayman. About eight years ago, I treated his L5–S1 disc with specially cultured stem cells. A little more than two years ago, I treated his L3–L4 disc, which I’d like to do some show-and-tell on today. At the time, he was having left L3 nerve symptoms down into his thigh; hence, we focused on a disc bulge at that level with our stem cell disc bulge treatment. Now that he’s back for a tune-up on L5–S1, I got a chance to sit down and place his L3–L4 disc films side by side.

Our Licensed Advanced-Practice Site in Grand Cayman

For years, we have allowed a site in Grand Cayman to use our culture-expansion technology to grow stem cells for patients that need that advanced care. It’s a beautiful place to visit, as evidenced by this image taken off our back porch:

We developed the technology for our stem cell disc bulge treatment through years of experience. This procedure is now the subject of an FDA phase-2 trial. However, in Grand Cayman, it’s considered the practice of medicine.

JS’s L3–L4 Disc

JS had a left lateral disc bulge abutting his L3 nerve. Since the L3 nerve supplies the big quad muscle and the skin of the thigh, his pain and symptoms were in the left thigh. If you look at the image above, you can see the image to the far left, which represents the 2014 image before his 2015 procedure. Notice that I have blown up the images of the disc bulge and the nerve. I have also outlined the disc bulge in a red dashed line and outlined the nerve in a blue dashed line. Notice how there isn’t much room between the two. Also notice the brighter area just to the left of the dashed red line, which represents a large tear in the disc. The two images on the right are the two-year post-treatment images which straddle the old area (an exact-match slice is not always possible with MRIs). Notice how the distance between the disc and the nerve, which shows up as an oval here, is greater, which means the disc has gotten smaller. Also notice that the larger bright area in the disc, representing the tear, is smaller, indicating less of a disc tear. His leg symptoms also promptly resolved after the treatment.

Why a Stem Cell Disc Bulge Treatment Instead of Surgery?

When a disc bulge is treated surgically, the offending bulge is cut out. The problem is that this is like trying to fix a bike tire bulge by sanding down the bulge and thus making the tire weaker. This is exactly what happens with a disc—the surgery just weakens the structure. This new stem cell disc bulge treatment involves a very precise fluoroscopically guided injection into the disc bulge area using stem cells that are cultured so that they can withstand the harsh environment of the disc. The goal is to heal the damaged fibers that allow the disc to bulge.

What’s Next for JS?

JS had a disc bulge treated eight years ago at L5–S1, and now this disc has begun to cause symptoms again and has a small degenerative bulge. He had a great run with his first stem cell treatment there, as we were finally able to manage his issues with an occasional platelet lysate epidural rather than being unable to keep his symptoms under control. Given that we were the first clinic on earth to inject stem cells into discs, we have patients with very long-term follow-ups who we can use to define how long the effects of these procedures last. Hence, he will get a tune-up disc injection while he’s here in Grand Cayman.

The upshot? It never ceases to amaze me how a precise injection of advanced stem cells can get rid of disc bulges in many patients. While this is not magic, it’s certainly cool to see!

The Regenexx-C procedure is not approved by the US FDA and is only offered in countries via license where culture-expanded autologous cells are permitted via local regulations. 

Do You Need Neck Stem Cell Therapy?

It’s a confusing time right now in stem cell therapy. So many clinics are claiming to do so many things, it’s hard to know what’s real versus just a money-making scam. This morning I’ll review a grandmother who got to the place where it was difficult to play with the grandkids and how we helped her, but in the process, I’ll also educate you about what’s real and what’s a scam.

What Was Causing Debbie’s Neck Pain?

I first brought you part of Debbie’s story a while back; she had been struggling with severe pain and functional issues in her thumb. After her doctor advised surgery, Debbie was determined to find another solution, and her son, who is a chiropractor, had recommended Dr. Schultz. Dr. Schultz discovered that Debbie’s thumb issue was actually stemming from a cervical spine injury that Debbie had suffered in a prior automobile accident. The foramen (spaces in the spinal column where the nerves exit) in the part of the cervical spine that the nerves supplying the thumb pass through had narrowed, irritating the nerves in the process.

In addition, Debbie had some lax ligaments as well as some irritation of her disc and facet joints in the same area of her cervical spine. These loose ligaments meant that the spinal bones would slide on one another, further decreasing the size of the holes where the nerves exit. Again, surgeons recommended surgery to address the chronic pain in Debbie’s neck, but as she shares in the video, due to the fact that it would have permanently immobilized this area of her neck, she was completely against surgery.

What a Surgical Fusion Would Have Done to Debbie’s Neck

A cervical fusion would have totally changed the life of this active grandmother of six. A fusion would have stopped movement in the affected area of her neck, making things like driving and playing with her grandkids more challenging. In addition, while most patients choose to undergo a spinal fusion in the hopes of eliminating their chronic pain, the truth is a fusion often leads to more pain as the segments of the spine above and below become damaged as they attempt to compensate for the work the now fused section can no longer do, a condition called adjacent segment disease that often results in additional fusions.

Debbie, having been a nurse for 40 years, knew the risks associated with spine surgery and knew it was not the right solution for her.

Dr. Schultz Performs Precisely Guided Platelet Treatments on Debbie’s Neck: No Surgery Required

During the same session as Debbie’s thumb treatment, Dr. Schultz also treated Debbie’s neck. In order to improve the tension on those lax neck ligaments thereby increasing the stability of the cervical spine, using precise ultrasound guidance, Dr. Schultz injected a high concentration of Debbie’s own platelet growth factors (platelet lysate) into each ligament. The irritated nerves were also treated using fluoroscopic guidance (real-time X-ray).

What was injected? Dr. Schultz used our fourth-generation platelet lysate. This is a growth-factor-rich cocktail that’s made by lysing the patient’s platelets. These growth factors can stimulate tissue to repair itself. Why not stem cells? For Debbie, they weren’t needed to get the results you see. Unlike other clinics that push you toward the only thing they offer, we have a broad spectrum of therapies and always seek to use the lowest cost and least invasive one that’s the most likely to help the patient.

A few weeks after the procedure, Debbie’s neck pain resolved without surgery. Her pain was gone, and the mobility in her neck had significantly improved. According to Debbie (be sure to watch her video above), “It was almost like it gave me new life.”

How to Avoid Neck Stem Cell Scams

The work that Dr. Schultz did with Debbie required extensive training and precision. He needed to hit a tiny 1–2 mm target on X-ray at a depth of 2 inches in order to get the growth factors in the right spot. However, these days it’s easy to get taken by clinics who have little expertise in this type of therapy but are more than happy to take your money. Here are things to watch out for:

1. A chiropractic clinic that has a nurse blindly injecting amniotic or umbilical cord tissue into your muscle trigger points. First, while these clinics claim that this is “stem cell therapy,” all amniotic and umbilical cord products on the market are regulated as nonviable (dead) tissue. Second, bizarrely, these therapies usually cost a lot more than Debbie paid. Third, a nurse practitioner who is regulated to be able to remove stitches and lance boils doesn’t have the training needed to inject your neck!
2. A pain management office that claims that it can inject young amniotic or umbilical cord tissue into your facet joints. Again, this is dead tissue.
3. A plastic surgeon or nonspecialist who wants to inject fat stem cells into your neck muscles.

The upshot? We’re happy we could help this grandmother play with her grandkids. However, getting her back to where she wanted to be required significant expertise. If you have neck pain and pinched nerves, stick with the experts, but avoid neck surgery. You’ll be glad you did.