Over the years, injuries have always been a problem for top-tier athletes all over the world. No matter what sport an athlete plays, if the sport involves physicality and endurance, athletes playing the sport are bound to wear out after quite some time. Despite years of training, and muscle building, muscles would almost always break down due to aging. Most of the greatest athletes don’t dominate in their sport forever. Injuries would usually get in the way of their career, forcing them to slowly deteriorate and eventually retire. It’s tragic, but it’s the reality in the world of sports.
An athlete’s muscles may not always be prepared for an intense game or activity that their mind would probably wish for. Because of this, injuries usually occur over time. When an athlete gets injured, he or she usually finds ways to recover from that injury. For swelling injuries, an ice pack is used. For stiffness injuries, a hot pack is used. However, this only applies to acute injuries. When an injury is more serious, surgery might be needed. A method that takes the longest for most types of injuries, on the other hand, would be natural healing. Most athletes that inflict serious injuries upon themselves often have to remain stationary for multiple months before being able to return to any regular physical activity. Knowing this, are there any other alternatives that athletes could take for a faster recovery?
Last April 2022, a group of scientists from John Hopkins University believed that they have created self-renewing lab-grown muscle cells that could possibly heal muscle injuries and muscle disorders more quickly and efficiently. They first started with self-renewing skin and brain cells, but they decided to find ways to transform those cells for specific organs. After trying different methods, they tried boiling the cells in a nutrient-rich broth, which eventually led them to the creation of muscle stem cells.
The same group of scientists also tested their findings by injecting these muscle cells into mice to see if there would be a significant difference. The setup they did involves genetically-engineered mice to have muscle wasting disorders in order to verify the effectiveness of this proposed method. In all of their experiments, the injected muscle cells positioned themselves in the same area where natural muscle cells stay and stayed there for more than 4 months. This area is known as the niche. In the experiment where mice were exposed to a muscle degrading toxin, the muscle cells injected immediately developed into muscle construction cells, also known as the myoblast. The experimental mice were also tested to run on a treadmill, and all of the injected mice ran twice as fast in comparison to other mice.
In the natural healing of a muscle, there are three major steps. The first step is the production of new muscle cells. In an injury, muscle cells are lost due to collateral damage caused by the injury, whether major or minor. Processes involved in this step would be cell division and the creation of muscle stem cells. The second step is the regeneration of lost blood. When damage is caused to the muscle with injury, internal bleeding occurs. Once blood is regenerated and enough cells are produced, muscle tissues are produced and later put together, which is the third and final stage of natural healing. The extracellular matrix (ECM) is regenerated in this step to help connect the tissues together to form a muscle.
Based on the findings of the experiment, a lot of promises could be made. However, there are some setbacks that this proposed method has, one of them being the mass production of these cells. The scientists from John Hopkins are still trying to figure out what ingredient from the nutrient-rich broth they used was the main cause of the creation of muscle cells. Additionally, mice are significantly smaller than humans. The injected muscle cells might be too weak, or even too strong with harmful chemicals if direct proportions were to be used. There are still a lot of risks since the proposed method has not been tested (or even approved for testing) in humans.
Another unanswered question would be its long-term effects. Is it safe in the long run? Is it healthier than having surgery or taking supplements? Are the chemicals used or involved safe for humans? These are obviously questions that can’t be answered right now. There is still a lot of research to do and a lot of progress to be made. However, the promises made by this proposal shouldn’t be ignored or taken for granted. This is definitely a move forward in the sports medicine industry and is of great help to athletes who need this type of medication the most.
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