Futuristic Technology Helps Elite Athletes Win

Rose Monday calls it her “secret weapon.”

She coaches the U.S. Olympic Women’s Track and Field Team, and she’s referring to Orthogold 100 SoftwaveTissue Regeneration. Her runners are being treated with this new device as they train for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.

It’s helping them recover from injuries and feel less pain. Monday says they aren’t limping like they used to and they’re no longer “dealing with the pain that I saw last year.” She adds: “This is a revolutionary technology that’s absolutely phenomenal. I am very thankful that we have it for our athletes.”

The U.S. Olympians aren’t the only elite athletes getting positive results from this technology. The Pittsburgh Steelers installed a Tissue Regeneration device in their team facilities before the 2020 season. They won the NFC North Division. Did the new machine contribute to their winning season? There’s no telling, but it certainly didn’t hinder the team’s improvement from the 2019 season when the Steelers missed the playoffs.

The Chicago Cubs, NBA-Champion Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks are among other professional sports teams using the device as part of their physical therapy routine. “It works great on high ankle sprains, which are very common in the NBA,” says Dr. Carolyn Flanary, who’s treated Olympic and other athletes with Tissue Regeneration.

Below are six reasons why sports teams are using Softwave to gain a competitive edge.

Professional sports teams pay their athletes vast amounts of money, and they are absolutely loath to adopt anything that could jeopardize that investment in their bodies. The Softwave Orthogold100 is cleared by the FDA as low risk. It’s a mostly painless procedure (unless a severe injury is being treated), and it doesn’t involve surgery or anything disruptive to the body. The treatment is outpatient and doesn’t involve a hospital stay. The doctor waves a wand that delivers super-sonic soundwaves over the affected parts of the body for three to four minutes during each session, and patients return for four to six treatments once a week.

One point I try to educate my patients on is this simple fact: Wherever you have pain, you have poor blood supply. If we are able to improve blood supply to an injured area, we can help decrease the pain. The Softwave machine stimulates blood flow. Ten to 12 weeks after treatment, researchers see neovascularization, or the actual formation of new blood pathways to that injured site.

The acoustic waves trick healthy cells into behaving as if a new injury has occurred. This triggers the body’s own natural healing response.

Within 45 minutes of treatment, the body activates resident stem cells, which are the repairmen of the body. Stem cells come out of a dormant state and initiate the body’s innate healing ability.

In the first 15 to 20 hours after treatment, patients will notice a decrease in pain, swelling and an improvement in range of motion. The true healing may take 8 to 10 weeks, when the maximum number of stem cells have been generated and have migrated to the treated area.

U.S. Olympic runner Luca Chatham says he used to worry often about hurting his Achilles heel or suffering another injury in training. This stress made his body more vulnerable, and he was careful not to run too hard during training.

It’s different now that he has access to Softwave treatments, along with the U.S. women’s team. There’s less down time, and he’s comfortable pushing himself more in training to perform at his best. “Just knowing that we have a treatment that speeds up the recovery process relieves a lot of mental stress. We can get back to training hard and just living our lives kind of without that stress of being injured,” adds Chatham.

His coach Rose Monday agrees: “There’s a fine line between being fit and over the break. And you have to really push that envelope if you’re going to be one of the best in the world and represent the United States on the Olympic team. And so we have to push that line and constantly be able to get better.”

The therapy has a smart component–in that it gives the healthcare practitioner the ability to diagnose and pinpoint the issue while treating the patient. If they’re scanning normal tissue, then there’s no pain.

However, once the practitioner runs it over an area with an injury, scar tissue, or arthritis, the patient will immediately feel pain. Most patients immediately yell, “Yup, right there!” upon feeling the pain.

This makes it easy for healthcare practitioners to find the epicenter of the problem, be it abnormal tissue, inflammation, or more generalized pain. There are times when the pain will be intense, but the more pain the patient feels, the better the clinical outcome.

Given all of these benefits, it’s little wonder the SoftwaveTissue Regeneration device is highly sought after as a training device for athletes. The good news is it’s also available at more and more places across the U.S. as doctors and chiropractors use it as a non-invasive form of pain treatment available to all patients. 

– Dr. Matthew DiDuro
Dr. Matthew DiDuro is Chief Medical Officer of SoftwaveTRT and research director of Atlanta Pain Institute. Softwave TRT is the distributor in North America of Orthogold 100 Softwave Tissue Regeneration.