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Healing Yourself With Stem Cells

POSTED: Monday, July 28, 2008

We may all have the power to save ourselves from diseases, viruses and paralysis. Researchers are making amazing discoveries with stem cells using an endless supply that's in our own bodies.

"Stem cells by definition live forever, and they do," said Dr. Emerson Perin, Cardiologist at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Patients suffering from congestive heart failure can use their own stem cells for treatment.

Stem cells are now being used to build new blood vessels and cardiac muscles. Doctors can harvest stem cells with a patient's own bone marrow. "So, if you were driving down route 90 and there was a big car accident, you would turn off the road and you would take little side streets. Well, the body does the same thing. It makes new blood vessels," said Dr. Daniel Simon with the Heart and Vascular Institute University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio.

Stem cells from your leg can also help resolve urinary incontinence. "Using your own body tissue as opposed to something foreign alleviates problems with reactions," said Dr. Lesley Carr, Urologist with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center/University of Toronto.

Doctors are able to take stem cells from patients' legs, inject them into muscles around the urethra, strengthen muscles and prevent leakage.

Another new breakthrough -- scientists have turned ordinary skin cells into a type of stem cell that is capable of forming multiple tissues without using human eggs or embryos.

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