IFBB Pro Eileen Wells’ Comeback Story – A Regenexx® Stem Cell Procedure Success

Eileen is an IFBB Professional Fitness Division Athlete who recently had to take 17 months off sports, which for someone like Eileen is tantamount to torture. This is the story of how advanced regenerative spine procedures including a low back stem cell treatment helped her get her groove back.

Eileen’s Low Back

Eileen began to notice back and leg problems 17 months ago that just started out of the blue. She had stabbing low back pain with exercise and numbness into the top of her foot. She first tried two sets of epidural steroid injections, but both only helped for about 1–2 weeks. She also had seen two surgeons who didn’t recommend disc surgery, but if she had continued in pain the next step was a low back fusion with screws and rods.

Her MRI images (left) showed a dark disc at L5–S1 with a tear in that disc and a small bulge. Her facet joints were also beginning to get arthritic.

Eileen’s Low Back Stem Cell Treatments

Dr. Pitts first saw this patient in April of 2015, and the focus at that time was on using the growth factors from her own blood platelets (our 3rd generation platelet lysate) to perform epidural and ligament injections (to help stabilize the L5–S1 area). While many patients would respond well at this level of care, Eileen only had partial relief (i.e., she was able to get off meds but not return to high-level physical activities). As a result, given that she had a tear in the disc and met the other requirements for a stem cell disc procedure, Dr. Pitts performed that procedure in September of last year. This involved taking the stem cells from the back of her hip (PSIS area), concentrating two stem cell fractions in the bone marrow aspirate and combining that with ultra-high concentrated platelet mixes, and injecting that into her two lowest discs, facet joints, and ligaments under X-ray guidance (fluoroscopy).

We just found out how Eileen is doing by catching her Regenexx hashtag (#Regenexx) on Instagram, which brings up the urban acrobat part of this story…

What Is an IFBB Professional Fitness Division Athlete?

The best way to answer that question is to watch Eileen do what she does:

#highfive #pushups @urban_acrobatics #foreverfitnessco with @harley_handstand

A video posted by Eileen Wells (@eileenwellsfitness) on Mar 27, 2016 at 10:25am PDT

This is how she notified us of her six-month post-injection status! Here’s her post:

eileenwellsfitness@regenexx here’s my 6 month #progress video after having#stemcell #injections in S1–L5 & L5–4 & several rounds of #PRP #thankyou for a#successful #procedure#centenoshultzclinic

regenexx@eileenwellsfitness Whow! Amazing!

eileenwellsfitness@regenexx I owe you guys big time!!! I couldn’t be happier with my results; my stem cells, my plasma—no scars, no hardware!

Just so you can get a sense of how the hip hop part plays into Eileen’s story, here’s that part of her six-month report:

#eileenwellsfitness @hb_fitness #pushup #challenge we need #creative #ideas for our new #IFBB #NPC #fitness #routines #calisthenics #whatyougot #bringiton #eileenscomeback #muscleeggstrong

A video posted by Eileen Wells (@eileenwellsfitness) on Mar 30, 2016 at 8:54pm PDT

The upshot? Eileen’s urban acrobatics are amazing, and we’re so happy we could help her get back to producing these amazing videos! Here’s to a low back stem cell procedure—as she said, no awful scars or fusion hardware required. BTW, I doubt I could have done any of what Eileen does even when I was 30!