Kobe Bryant is just one of the past-his-prime athletes who's experiencing a career resurgence with the help of next-gen sports medicine.
This summer, Kobe went to Germany to get an experimental knee treatment. And now, he's taking an injection in his wrist every night to play through pain.
These procedures are part of the crazy new world of sports medicine — where athletes use enriched blood, bone marrow, and even egg-shaped space pods to improve performance.
Microfracture surgery is when they use an awl to create tiny fissures in your knee bone that allows blood and bone marrow to seep out and eventually create a new ligament
This procedure is most popular among NBA players with bad knee problems.
The careers of Penny Hardaway, Chris Webber, and Allan Houston were all changed dramatically when they couldn't find their old form after the surgery.
Amare Stoudemire is the rare exception — he has recovered well since he had the procedure in 2005.
Source: The Good Point
Platelet-rich plasma therapy is when they enrich your blood by putting it in a centrifuge and then inject it into the body part you want to get stronger
Kobe Bryant went to Germany to have the non-FDA approved procedure on his knees this summer.
The results?
His aging knees look rejuvenated, and he's in the early hunt for MVP. People are ribbing him by referring to his "knee steroids," but he may have lengthened his career with the experimental procedure.
The American medical community doesn't buy it, but Kobe believes in it enough to suggest that A-Rod go to Deutschland to get the same thing.
Like platelet therapy, doctors are taking fat and bone marrow stem cells out of the body, enriching them, and injecting them back into the injured area to make it a super-appendage
Remember that time Bartolo Colon was an absolute monster for the Yankees in the first-half of 2011 after being worthless for a couple seasons?
Well, you can owe that to an experimental therapy (similar to Kobe's knee steroids) that Colon underwent in the Dominican Republic last winter.
Source: NYT
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