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Regenerating Your Body From The Inside Out
Over the past few years the term 'stem cell' periodically shows up in the news. If you've heard of it you probably know that there is great controversy about whether to do research in this area of medicine.
Today I want to clear up an important misconception about this research and also share with you information that will help you understand what this whole idea really means for your health and longevity.
The Controversy
First, let's get past the controversy. People against stem cell research are typically against research in embryonic stem cell research. This is research using stem cells taken from human embryos.
What you almost never hear is that each and every one of us constantly makes our own stem cells from the moment we're born. Called adult stem cells, these 'internal rejuvenators' help your body repair and renew itself.
What are Stem Cells?
Stem cells are master cells released from bone marrow that have the ability to become virtually any other type of cell in the body. They can transform into bone, blood, connective tissue, organ and even nerve cells.
In other words, virtually every organ and tissue in your body can use them to rebuild itself. Many studies show that their job is to help your organs and tissues maintain proper functioning and repair them when they become damaged or diseased.
Unfortunately, as with many natural functions in our bodies, our ability to generate new stem cells decreases as we get older. This is one reason why we tend to heal more slowly with age.
Cutting Edge Research
Currently, there is great interest in discovering what triggers the body to make more stem cells. Why? Because if we can figure out how to effectively add more stem cells, huge improvements in health are possible.
We know this because when people create more stem cells they often experience improvement in their health. Even diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and heart disease often show improvement in clinical settings when there are more stem cells present.
In fact, if you wanted to, you could go abroad and pay outrageous amounts of money to have someone inject stem cells into your system. One recent example was Don Ho from Hawaii who went to the Orient and paid $30,000 for such a treatment.
Unfortunately, even though he experienced benefits, they didn't continue after the treatments were over. This suggests that simply dumping a huge amount of externally-sourced stem cells into your system isn't effective for long-term improvement.
If You Want To Find Out More
This topic is so important, the NIH has an entire site devoted to it. You can view it by clicking here. This link takes you to the page that talks about adult stem cells and how they work.
To learn even more about what stem cells do and the latest research findings, use the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website (www.pubmed.gov). Enter "Adult Stem Cell" in the search box and click the "Go" button.
You can narrow your search by adding a "+" and whatever else you'd like to find. For example, the search "Adult Stem Cell + Diabetes" gives you 18 different research abstracts describing various stages of research regarding the effects of stem cells on this disease. Be aware that these are abstracts of scientific research papers and will likely be somewhat difficult to read.
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