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Stretch marks are one of the biggest problems of women around the world. With the advent of pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing, it seems that women have little choice when it comes to taking charge of their own skin. Stretch marks occur when small or large parts of the skin on the abdomen or near the breasts experience unprecedented expansion, then a sudden contraction. The space that was taken up by the extra body mass leaves a mark on the human skin.
Stretch marks are usually thin lines that run across the surface of the skin. Often there are red and resemble live arteries. While these marks do not pose any health problems, it poses a social problem to women who want to look as good as they did before they got pregnant.
Let's face it, stretch marks don't look good at all. They disrupt the continuity that we see on the surface of the human skin. But in the final analysis, they don't really mean anything at all. Of course, we can't tell people this, and we can't really detect whether the people around us are judgmental or not. It seems that science has been listening all along, and is providing us with a means to take charge over stretch marks once and for all.
The New Treatment for Stretch Marks
In the new treatment for stretch marks, the patient's very own skin cells would be injected into the problem areas on the skin to rejuvenate old tissue and to eventually erase the stretch marks. The treatment, which was also aimed at helping individuals with gum disease is being seen as less painful and less expensive way of dealing with stretch marks.
In the United Kingdom, the new treatment is being tested on select individuals. The test site is at the University College, located in London. The new therapy, which is known in medical parlance as “living cell therapy” requires only a very, very small skin sample from the patient. Usually, the skin sample is taken from a part of the body that is known to exhibit rapid cell growth, such as the human ears.
After the sampling is done, the next step in the process is the isolation and extraction of fibroblasts from the skin sample of the patient. The fibroblasts are responsible for the distribution of collagen, and important catalysts in the growth of nails, hair and human skin.
Basically, stretch marks are “trauma sites” on the human skin. Simply put, these areas have been dealt with an internal or external pressure which causes the skin to expand or contract beyond the natural or normal, pre-trauma dimensions. The fibroblasts help heal these trauma sites by regulating the growth of new skin cells on the area.
By increasing the pace of growth on a particular area, scars and stretch marks can hopefully be removed. With luck, this new treatment may also be used in other instances, such as the re-growing of normal skin on burn patients and even for the treatment of individuals who have been suffering from excruciating ulcers.