One of the NBA’s most exciting rising stars will spend the rest of the 2024-2025 season on the bench. Victor Wembanyama, the San Antonio Spurs’ 7-foot 3-inch phenom, was sidelined after doctors discovered a dangerous blood clot in his right shoulder, the league announced Thursday. The 21-year-old French standout, who earned Rookie of the Year honors last season, was diagnosed after his return from Sunday’s 2025 All-Star Game with deep vein thrombosis (DVT).  DVT is a dangerous condition in which a blood clot forms in a vein deep inside the body, usually in the legs but sometimes in arms or shoulders, as in Wembanyama’s case.  “The medical experts and the people that are smarter than everybody in the room … confirm that he’ll be done this year, and that there is no concern for Victor’s long-term health personally, or anything related to his basketball activities,” acting Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said, according to the Associated Press. DVT can develop after after injuries, surgery or long periods of inactivity such as a long car or plane trip, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If left untreated, the clot can break loose and travel to the lungs, causing a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. Clots can also block blood flow to the brain or heart, increasing the risk of stroke or heart attack, experts…  read on >  read on >

Stroke patients leave the hospital with better prospects if they’re forced to hoof it more during recovery, a new study suggests. Adding a half-hour of progressive walking exercises to standard stroke rehab measurably improves patients’ quality of life and mobility by the time they go home, researchers say. “Although guidelines recommend structured, progressive exercise after stroke, the uptake of these approaches that have sufficient intensity for rehab programs is still lagging,” researcher Janice Eng, a stroke rehabilitation specialist and professor of physical therapy at the University of British Columbia in Canada, said in a news release. “Structured and progressively more challenging exercise, aided by wearable devices to provide feedback on intensity, can help people maintain safe intensity levels that are crucial for neuroplasticity — which is the brain’s ability to heal and adapt,” Eng added. For the study, her team recruited more than 300 stroke patients rehabbing at 12 hospitals across Canada. At the start, patients could walk an average of about 500 feet, nearly the distance of two average city blocks, during a standard six-minute walk test. Roughly half were randomly assigned to add a minimum of 30 minutes of weight-bearing and walking activities to their daily rehab, with these activities increasing in intensity over time. The goal was to get up to 2,000 steps of moderately intense exercise for a half-hour five days…  read on >  read on >

High school athletes often hit the field improperly fueled for the competition ahead, because they haven’t been taught important basics of nutrition, a new study says. In surveys, teen athletes revealed a dramatic lack of knowledge about nutrition facts that could help them compete harder and recover better, researchers reported recently in the journal Nutrition. “Their level of general nutrition knowledge and sport nutrition knowledge was very, very low,” researcher Jennifer Fields, an assistant professor of nutritional science with the University of Connecticut, said in a news release.  “They didn’t know how to eat a balanced diet for their overall health,” she continued. “Moreso, they didn’t know how to make proper fueling decisions for their sport.” For the study, 44 teenage student athletes filled out the Abridged Sports Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire, a survey designed to suss out how much a person knows about nutrition in general and eating for athletic competition in particular. Overall, the students got only about 45% of the questions right, results show. They scored 58% on general nutrition knowledge and 35% on sports nutrition. In particular, students were way off base when it came to the key nutrients they need to compete effectively, researchers said. The teens thought they needed fewer carbohydrates and calories than is recommended, as well as far more protein and fat than necessary, the study found. In…  read on >  read on >

Ahead of this weekend’s Super Bowl, some good news for the athletes: NFL players are largely avoiding opioid-based pain relievers when injuries strike. A new study of data from the 2021 and 2022 seasons finds the National Football League’s efforts to curb addictive opioid use is working, with the drugs comprising less than 3% of all pain meds prescribed.  “Moreover, only 10 percent of NFL athletes received even a single prescription for an opioid during a one-year period,” noted study co-author Dr. Kurt Kroenke, a researcher-clinician at the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine, in Indianapolis.  “I think there’s been much greater attention to what can be done in the training room for NFL athletes for their injuries and pain that doesn’t rely on medicines,” he added.  Many Americans fall prey to opioid misuse and addiction when they are prescribed the drugs to ease pain from injury or another cause.  Even the toughest athletes can be vulnerable. “Professional football is a very physical sport,” Kroenke said in a Regenstrief news release. “But anyone who watches professional hockey or NBA basketball or big league soccer and even college and high school sports, realizes how these players also are prone to injuries and pain.” When it comes to pro football players, he added, “there’s always been a concern from a safety and health perspective about…  read on >  read on >

Cold showers or ice baths have become a trendy way to recuperate after a heavy-duty workout, but do they actually help? A new evidence review suggests there’s some science to back up the hype. People report lower stress, improved sleep and better quality of life following cold-water immersion, researchers reported Jan. 29 in the journal PLOS One. However, these benefits often aren’t long-lasting, and in some cases, the body’s response might be bad for chronic health problems like heart disease, the review found.  “In this study, we noted a range of time-dependent results,” lead investigator Tara Cain, a research assistant studying health and human performance with the University of South Australia, said in a news release. For example, “we found that cold-water immersion could reduce stress levels, but for only about 12 hours post-exposure,” Cain said. Researchers also noted that participants who took 20-, 60- or 90-second cold showers reported slightly higher quality of life scores. “But again,” Cain added, “After three months these effects had faded.” For the review, researchers pooled data from 11 studies on cold-water immersion involving nearly 3,200 people. Cold-water immersion involves dunking the body partially or fully in chilly water, with temperatures typically ranging from 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, researchers said in background notes. In this review, data was only included if exposure was at or above chest level…  read on >  read on >