Sports Medicine Articles & Stories

In this day and age – stress and tension is life, not just part of life.  One must find a healthy means of tension release, otherwise the stress only builds up over time.

Yoga has been in existence for a few thousand years; and the body, mind and spirit join with the higher one, if such a creature exists. Joseph Pilates evolved his study of yoga into a higher degree of musculoskeletal control through focus and concentration. In fact, during Joseph Pilates’ lifetime, his method was never called “Pilates” but rather “Contrology,” which Pilates explained was “The Art of Control.” Pilates develops specific muscular isolations; strengthening “lazy”, less utilized muscle groups. Yoga’s fluid breathing patterns are maintained throughout Pilates; assisting areas such as the neck, face, shoulders, and hands to soften amid challenging exercise regimes. 

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When a person breaks his or her neck, the delicate and vital nerve tissue of the spinal cord can be torn, setting in motion a cascade of dying nerves up and down the spine.

But a new technique that runs icy cold brine into the veins of spine injury victims to reduce their body temperature to 92 degrees for two days appears to hold promise to protect them from the cascading nerve damage and offer them hope to move and feel again. ( Read more about Radical Cooling May Minimize Spinal Cord Damage)

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A chiropractor who also was coach of the U.S. Olympic men's water polo team helped the group to win the silver medal in Beijing, in a match against Hungary, by providing members with daily chiropractic adjustments. "I can honestly say that without chiropractic, many Olympic athletes would not be able to perform to their potential," said Merrill Moses, the team's goalkeeper. "We take such a pounding on our bodies, especially in water polo, because it's a contact sport. I like to get a chiropractic adjustment every day just to keep my body healthy."

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Your life can be changed - and extended - by just a little regular exercise, according to a report by a blue-ribbon U.S. panel. A commission empaneled by the federal Department of Health and Human Services says your most important exercise paraphernalia are your legs. The panel declares that a moderately paced half-hour walk five days a week will lower your risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and many other disorders. And the benefit will be conferred even if you're overweight or obese - and regardless of your age, race or gender.

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Treating and preventing chronic neck pain can often be successfully accomplished by something as simple as adopting correct posture while waking and sleeping. While the pain sufferer can treat the symptoms of frequent neck "cricks" with neck stretch exercises, painkillers or ice applications, the symptoms' root causes must be dealt with differently. These root causes often involve some kind of poor posture, says Dr. Brian Bruel, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation on the one hand, and anesthesiology and pain management on the other, at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Posture violators might crouch over a desk all day long, slouch on a sofa while watching TV, or contort themselves while reading.

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High impact activities like jumping and skipping has been shown to benefit bone health in adolescents. A ten minute school based intervention, provided twice a week for eight months, greatly improved bone and muscle strength in healthy teenagers when compared to regular warmups. Physiotherapist Ben Weeks said the warm-up, which included high intensity jumps and lunges of gradually increasing complexity and repetition, was specifically designed to stimulate skeletal growth. By the end of the study, students worked up to about 300 jumps per session.

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For people who run regularly, you may be extending your disability-free, higher quality of life. When senior author, James Fries, began research on vigorous exercise in 1984, many scientists expected the results would do more harm than good. Some experts believed the long-term effect of serious running would be an onslaught of orthopedic injuries, with older runners suffering from chronic injury. But Fries believed it would improve quality of life and reduce the period at the end of a person's life where they couldn't carry out daily tasks on their own.

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Exercise may not halt the aging process, but mounting evidence suggests people who stay active can slow its effects. The latest issue of Mayo Clinic Women's Healthsource offers 8 benefits to regular exercise. It Provides Energy: Feeling tired and lethargic is largely a result of being inactive. Endurance exercises like walking, swimming, jogging, biking, and rowing improves stamina and energy. Even after a few weeks in a walking program, people have more energy for activities. It Improves Mental Health: There's considerable evidence that regular physical activity can help reduce stress, manage mild-to-moderate depression and anxiety, improve sleep quality, boost mood, and enhance the overall feeling of well-being.

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Neck pain has become increasingly prevalent over the past two decades and is now second only to back pain, the most common musculoskeletal disorder and most common cause of disability in working Americans. Women are more likely to suffer from neck pain than are men, especially those who engage in repetitive tasks such as working at a computer keyboard. Previous studies have not proven whether or not exercise alone can treat neck pain. . However, a recent study in Arthritis Care and Research found that specific strength training exercises led to significant prolonged relief of neck muscle pain while general fitness training resulted in only minor pain reduction.

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People who are physically active in their free time may be biologically younger than those who live sedentary lifestyles, a recent British study suggests. Researchers looked at the physical activity levels, smoking habits and socioeconomic status of 2,400 white twins. DNA samples were collected from participants in order to examine length of telomeres-repeated sequences at the end of chromosomes in white blood cells - which serves as a possible marker of a person's biological age. Study participants had an average telomere loss of 21 nucleotides per year. But those who were more active in their leisure time had longer leukocyte telomeres than those who were less active.

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