Dr. Jeffrey GladdenFounder & CEO of Gladden Longevity

Sports Medicine Explained‼️

2 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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1:03

In this interview, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden and a co‑speaker discuss the emerging "anabolic era" in sports medicine and arthritis treatment. They explain that modern practice moves beyond merely repairing damaged tissue; it now adds biologic anabolics—such as platelet‑rich plasma (PRP), bone‑marrow aspirate, autologous fat, mesenchymal stem cells, and various birth‑tissue products—to stimulate the body’s own healing cascade of endogenous peptides and stem cells. These growth‑factor‑rich substances are intended to accelerate tissue repair, especially for high‑profile injuries like anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears and Achilles ruptures, which traditionally require up to a year of recovery. The conversation highlights how these anabolics are being incorporated into cartilage regeneration protocols to shorten healing times and improve outcomes.

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So really what you were, you were encouraging the body to send off its own cascade of, you know, endogenous peptides and stem cells and things like that to actually get the paste to be incorporated, right?
So at the time, that's exactly right. Now, since then, and since we're now in what I call the anabolic era of sports medicine and arthritis, we now no longer just treat people by repairing their tissues. We add anabolics to them to stimulate the healing response. And those anabolics are PRP and bone marrow aspirate and fat and sometimes mesenchymal stem cells and sometimes birth tissues. All these things that have huge amounts of growth factors and chemotactic factors that help the repair tissue heal and heal faster. So everybody asks, you know, why does it take a year to come back from an ACL injury or an Achilles rupture? And we're trying to speed up that healing time by adding these anabolic factors. And so in the cartilage regeneration world, while I did it without adding factors for a long time, we now are adding factors whenever we can.