Bartolo Colon
Posted on 06/07/2011 1:11:14 PM PDT by wagglebee
Bartolo Colon
BOCA RATON, Florida, June 7, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bartolo Colon’s career seemed to be going down the drains, after being one of major league baseball’s top starting pitchers. In 2005 Colon won the American League Cy Young award, but a series of shoulder and elbow injuries sidelined him until, in 2010, he didn’t play in the majors at all.
By 2009, Colon’s astonishing 97 mph fastball had slowed down considerably and every pitch he threw resulted in agonizing pain: so he went home to the Dominican Republic, defeated.
But in March of 2010, a doctor in the Dominican Republic, Leonel Liriano, contacted Dr. Joseph R. Purita, an orthopedic surgeon who runs a regenerative medicine clinic in Boca Raton. Dr. Liriano asked Purita if he would help in treating Colon.
Purita has used adult stem cell therapy to help numerous athletes with sports injuries, including athletes with the Baltimore Ravens, the Miami Dolphins, the Chicago White Sox and the Texas Rangers.
The treatments involve adult stem cells and platelet-rich plasma therapy, or P.R.P., as an alternative to surgery or in combination with it.
In April 2010 Dr. Purita agreed to Dr. Liriano’s request and flew to the Dominican Republic to interview Colon.
“It was not that it was illegal to do the procedure here in the United States,” Purita said. “He was just living in the Dominican Republic. Everything was above board.”
“Colon said he wanted to get back into baseball,” Purita told the NY Times. “He could not throw the ball without horrible pain, but he felt he still had something left in the can, so to speak. I told Colon this will be a lot less painful than facing Derek Jeter. He said: ‘Derek Jeter? He has never been a problem for me. I always strike him out.’ ”
The procedure performed at the Clinica Union Medica in the city of Santiago involved extracting fat and bone marrow stem cells from Colon and injecting them back into the pitcher’s elbow and shoulder to help repair ligament damage and a torn rotator cuff.
Dr. Purita, who did not charge for his services, said the procedure took only 45 minutes to complete and positive results were evident almost immediately.
“We had him start working out within the first month,” Purita said. “Then I am hearing that he is starting to pitch, and then I hear that he is starting to tear them up in the Dominican league. But I said with a rotator cuff tear and a bad elbow, I don’t know about him getting back into the majors.”
Colon was playing for a Dominican ball team managed by former Yankee coach Tony Pena. But in January of this year, the New York Yankees signed Colon to a contract worth $900,000.
“I feel in my heart and my soul, his performance has been because of the treatment,” Dr. Liriano said. “You see that his fastball is about 95 or 96 miles per hour. It is a miracle, no?”
“This is not hocus-pocus,” Dr. Purita said in an interview back in Florida. “This is the future of sports medicine, in particular. Here it is that I got a guy back playing baseball and throwing pitches at 95 miles an hour.”
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
Sounds great! Pump me full of that crap and don’t stop until you see ligaments comin’ outta my ears! I’d love to get back to the gym.
Just watch, WADA will ban this treatment (designate the patients own adult stem cells as a “performance enhancing substance”) since no babies were sacrificed to Moloch.
Gee I just want to be able to turn my neck without pain.
X-rays show it full of arthritis.How does this stuff work on arthritis.
Do you have a copy? Or know where I can find it?
Thanks in advance!
During our last move, Hubby tore the tendons in his right arm at the elbow leaving him with a weakened arm. His doctor said that there wasn’t much hope for its ever being normal again, and in this type of injury, surgery had a good chance of making it worse.
I sent him a link to this post so he can look into getting his arm back again. This is wonderfully exciting to me, and I hope that something good comes of it for my beloved.
Thanks for the ping.
Great to see adult stem cells give someone his career back. However, Colon is mistaken about his success against Jeter. Jeter owns him to the tune of a .372 career batting average and .994 OPS. Ouch.
I think this is a possible treatment for severe arthritis [gout, rheumatoid].
If this procedure can repair a joint tear, basically arthritis invades the joint.
Surgery could remove the arthritic inflammation, and then use this to repair the joint.
Uric Acid Crystals cause some forms of arthritis, so these would have to be removed in the inflamed area... Other deposits that cause problems are calcium pyrophosphate crystals.
Rheumatoid is a special form, and a crippler once it takes hold.
Joints/ligaments are hard to heal because they are composed of dense fibrous tissue that does not provide for good blood flow...
But this might be a possible treatment for arthritis...
There have been an additional 10 to 20 more (at least) adult stem cell breakthroughs since then, including rebuilding heart tissue.
Belly Fat cells were used for that...
I think posted some info about this a year or less ago...
Most age related arthritis is due to Uric Acid Crystal deposits (monosodium urate crystals) or calcium pyrophosphate crystals.
The treatment would be to remove the crystals inflaming the joint, and then inject the adult stem cells.
The fat stem cells have been used to regenerate heart muscle tissue after heart attacks, so using these fat stem cells probably would due the job.
I will have to email the Assistant Biology Department head about this at the University. She teaches Anatomy and Physiology...
But you have to remove the stuff that is inflaming the joint. Laparoscopic surgery should do the job (for removing arthritis crystals)...
Scorecard: 73 Adult, 0 Embryonic.
This webpage states there are 2110 Adult Stem Cell trials going on.
There are 4 embryonic stem cell going, but none on human patients.
This is from a pro-life page (Life Institute):
Thanks.
I think it’s 80 - 0 now.
Thanks.
Belly Fat Stem Cells May Help Heart
Excerpt:
Belly Fat Stem Cells May Help HeartStudy Shows Fat Stem Cells May Improve Heart Function After Heart Attack
By Charlene Laino
WebMD Health NewsReviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
Nov. 16, 2010 (Chicago) -- Stem cells taken from belly fat may be able to boost cardiac function after a heart attack, preliminary research suggests. In a study of 14 people who had a heart attack, fat-derived stem cells reduced the amount of damaged heart tissue, increased blood flow in the heart, and improved the heart's pumping ability, compared with placebo.
Due to the study's small size, however, the difference between the two groups could have been due to chance.
"But given the dramatic and consistent results, we think it is a real effect," says study head Eric Duckers, MD, PhD, of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
U.S. stem cell researcher Douglas Losordo, MD, of the program in cardiovascular regenerative medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, tells WebMD, "The evidence strongly suggests fat stem cells can stimulate the repair process after a heart attack. But these are still early days. We have to await the results of larger randomized trials [pitting placebo against fat stem cells] to determine if the method improves quality of life and extends lives."
Seems like they were invented 20 years late for him.
It waas gut-wrenching to see his arm almost completely detach while on the mound.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.