Platelets for Breakfast

Yukan Fuji, 2010 – Robert Whiting

Have you ever heard of platelet-rich plasma injection therapy (PRP)? Neither have I – but a lot of people in MLB have. One of them is Seattle Mariners pitcher Cliff Lee who spent the first part of the season on the disabled list recovering from a severe strain in his lower right abdomen, incurred in a home plate collision during a mid-March Spring Training game. Lee, the 2008 AL CY Young Award winner, used the therapy to speed up the recovery process of his injury. Another user was Takashi Saito, Atlanta Braves reliever, who avoided surgery on a partially torn ligament in his throwing elbow during the 2008 season. The therapy enabled him to come back in time to pitch late in the Los Angeles Dodgers playoff race when he was still with that LA team. 

Still another PRP user was Tiger Woods. In June 2008, he underwent PRP therapy after undergoing undergo reconstructive Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) surgery on his left knee arthroscopic to treat a bad knee and, after a period of rehabilitation (during which he was able to enjoy a supremely active sex life), he was able to successfully return to the 2009 PGA circuit early the following year. (It is not known if Tiger used PRP therapy to recover from the facial wounds subsequently inflicted by his wife, Elin, when she attacked in with a golf club over his wide-ranging infidelities.)

In this new procedure, a tube of a patient’s blood is taken out and put in a centrifuge and spun, producing concentrated platelets. Those platelets contain growth factors that accelerate tissue repair and regeneration. The platelets are then in injected into the injury site.

Platelet rich plasma injection therapy is becoming increasingly popular and hailed as a savior to players with injuries. But it can also be compared to HGH, the Human Growth Hormone. And therein lies the problem.

HGH, while approved by the FDA, is outlawed in US professional sports. The use of HGH, like the use of steroids, is regarded as cheating because it gives players an unfair advantage. Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite and other players have used HGH and have gotten into hot water as a result. Any player caught using it can expect a fine and a suspension.

What is HGH exactly? It is a peptide hormone secreted by the anterior pituitary gland in the brain. HGH enhances tissue growth by stimulating protein formation and is thus highly useful in speeding up the healing of injuries. HGH is a key hormone because it controls so many functions. It’s responsible for youth vitality, energy and all of the health benefits we associate with youth. The use of HGH can reverse the effects of aging upon the human body. Yet, HGH is considered in professional sports, bad because it gives user and unfair and unnatural methods of getting well.

Both HGH and platelet-rich plasma are natural kinds of derivatives, which can also be synthetically made. The procedures that Lee and Saito went through are remarkably similar to HGH therapy used by Clemens, Petite. It is also similar to what a doctor in Canada did for Yankee star A-Rod. Yet, while the reputations of those players were sullied—and that doctor got into trouble for transporting HGH over the border—no one is criticizing Lee or Saito.

It makes no sense. HGH is bad, but platelet rich plasma is good? Or, by the same logic steroid injections for failing muscles are bad, but Lasik surgery for failing eyesight is good.

The only thing we can be sure of is that this is only the beginning of what medicine is going to do. And the truth means that there will be a whole spectrum of methods that Major League Baseball is going to have to sift through to determine what category they fall in, good or evil.

Since it seems the powers in the MLB cannot even figure that out now, the general confusion is only going to get worse.

The ground rules for what can and cannot go into a player’s body are going to keep changing, and changing and then changing some more.

Perhaps one day MLB players will be having platelets for breakfast.