Sports « Weekly Gravy

Another broiling summer looms, along with another season of kids’ summer sports. It’s a potentially harmful, even lethal combination. But experts at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) have advice for kids, parents and coaches on how to keep young athletes safe when thermometers rise. Each year, an estimated 240 people die from heat-linked illnesses, and heat stroke is the third-ranked cause of death for young U.S. high school athletes, according to NCH. Heat poses special threats to young athletes, said Dr. Thomas Pommering, medical director for Nationwide Children’s Sports Medicine. “Youth and adolescent athletes sweat less, create more heat per body mass, and acclimate much slower than adults to warmer environments, putting them at greater risk for heat-related injuries in hot and humid temperatures,” he said in an online post from the hospital. Spotting heat-linked illness There are telltale signs on the playing field (or anywhere) that someone may be overcome by the heat. Various types of heat illness include: Heat cramps. As too much sweating causes salt and water to leave the body, this can cause severe cramping in the limbs and abdomen. Heat syncope. Syncope is the medical term for fainting, which can be preceded by weakness and fatigue. Heat exhaustion. This could manifest in cool, pale skin and the onset of headache, nausea, chills, weakness, unsteadiness, dizziness, rapid pulse, excessive thirst and muscle… read on > read on >

Active women using the pill appear to receive an added bonus from their birth control, a new study says. These women are less likely to suffer sprains and strains than women not on birth control, researchers reported recently in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Women taking oral contraceptives had significantly fewer tendon and muscle injuries than women not on the pill or men, results show. These sorts of injuries are among the most common in sports, researchers said. “This understanding holds promise for informing the development of targeted preventive strategies and interventions aimed at reducing injury risk in women, benefiting both athletic and nonathletic populations,” said lead researcher Luis Rodriguez. He’s a doctoral candidate with the Joint Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program at University of Texas-Dallas and University of Texas-Southwestern. For the study, researchers analyzed health data for more than 126,000 men and women between the ages of 18 and 39 who were either normal weight or overweight and had sustained an orthopedic injury. About 0.5% of women on the pill had a sprain or strain, versus 2.5% of women not taking birth control and 3.5% of men, researchers found. Overall, women taking the pill were 85% less likely than men to suffer a sprained muscle or strained tendon, results show. Meanwhile, women not taking the pill were only about 26% less likely… read on > read on >

Walking is one of the best exercises available to average folks, and it can be as easy as stepping out your front door, experts say. “It is something you can easily fit into your lifestyle,” said Dr. James McDeavitt, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation and executive vice president and dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine. Walking has been shown to improve heart health and contribute to better mental health. It can even ward off osteoporosis by toughening up bones, McDeavitt added. Walking also serves as a wonderful entry point for someone looking to improve physical activity, since it involves less wear and tear on the joints than running. Even for people with health problems that impair mobility, walking is a good exercise option, McDeavitt said. Indoor running tracks provide a safe environment, particularly if someone has the company of a caregiver or loved one. However, treadmills and other automated cardio machines should be avoided by those with severe mobility issues, as there’s a greater risk of injury with those devices. Folks who’ve been inactive should start by consistently walking five to 10 minutes a day, and then gradually increasing that time, McDeavitt said. McDeavitt recommends walking at a low intensity for a longer duration to get the most out of walking, rather than trying to power-walk. However, walking at a faster… read on > read on >

You know exercise is great for your cardiovascular health, but new research suggests that your brain has a lot to do with it. It’s all about physical activity’s ability to lower stress levels within the brain, explained a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. Bolstering that finding, their study found that exercise brought the greatest heart benefits to people with histories of depression. “Physical activity was roughly twice as effective in lowering cardiovascular disease risk among those with depression,” noted study lead author Dr. Ahmed Tawakol. He’s an investigator and cardiologist in the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center at MGH. The study was published April 15 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In the research, Tawakol’s team looked at a median 10 years of data on more than 50,000 people enrolled in the Mass General Brigham Biobank database. All of the participants kept records of their physical activity. A subset of 774 also underwent brain scans and other tests measuring their stress-linked brain activity. Over the decade of follow-up, almost 13% of the participants went on to develop heart disease, the researchers reported. However, folks who met standard recommendations for physical activity were 23% less likely to receive such a diagnosis. Those individuals also had markedly less brain activity associated with stress than people who exercised less, Tawakol’s team found. Specifically, fitter… read on > read on >

Early-onset arthritis may hit as many as one in every four young people who undergo anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction surgeries, new research warns. The arthritic pain emerges within 6 to 12 months post-surgery, according to Michigan State University (MSU) researchers. Many of these cases occur in people under 40 and go unrecognized and untreated. “We’re trying to change the narrative,” said study lead author Matthew Harkey, an assistant professor of kinesiology at MSU. “We see fairly young, active individuals experiencing extensive symptoms, but these symptoms are not interpreted by clinicians as something that may be related to osteoarthritis. Ignoring these symptoms might be setting them up to experience long-term decline and function.” Tears to the ACL ligament within the knee are common, and often corrected with a surgery that replaces the ligament with a graft. Over 400,000 ACL reconstructions are performed in the United States annually, according to the National Institutes of Health. In the new study, Harkey’s team examined outcomes for 82 people, ages 13 to 35, who underwent ACL reconstructive surgeries. Almost a quarter of the patients reported “persistent early arthritis symptoms from 6 to 12 months after knee surgery,” according to a university news release. In another Harkey-led study, data from 3,200 individuals supplied by the New Zealand ACL Registry showed that almost a third of patients developed arthritic pain within… read on > read on >

People with Long COVID might be able to exercise to improve their health, something that up to now has been discouraged, a new study suggests. “The World Health Organization [WHO] and other major bodies have said that people with post-COVID should avoid intense exercise,” said lead researcher Andrea Tryfonos, a postdoctoral investigator with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. But the new findings show that Long COVID patients do just as well after exercise as healthy people, “even though they had more symptoms to begin with,” Tryfonos said in an institute news release. “By equally well, I mean that they did not worsen their symptoms or negatively affect their body during the 48 hours we observed them.” Early observations suggested that exercising with Long COVID could be harmful, researchers noted. Folks with Long COVID often experience symptoms like extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, elevated heart rate and muscle weakness, and these are often exacerbated by exertion. To see whether exercise helps or harms, researchers recruited 31 people with Long COVID and matched them to 31 healthy people. All participants completed three different exercise sessions consisting of high-intensity interval training and moderate-intensity aerobic exercise — both on an exercise bike – as well as strength training. The sessions happened in random order a few weeks apart, researchers said. All participants underwent a battery of medical exams before,… read on > read on >

Suicides among U.S. college athletes have doubled over the past two years, according to data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Suicide is now the second most common cause of death for college athletes after accidents, results show. “Athletes are generally thought of as one of the healthiest populations in our society, yet the pressures of school, internal and external performance expectations, time demands, injury, athletic identity and physical fatigue can lead to depression, mental health problems and suicide,” wrote the research team led by Bridget Whelan, a research coordinator with the University of Washington in Seattle. For the study, Whelan and colleagues analyzed suicides among NCAA athletes from June 2002 to June 2022. During the two decades, 1,102 athletes died. Of those, 128 took their own lives, including 98 men and 30 women. The suicide rate among college athletes doubled comparing the first decade and the second, rising from 7.6% to 15.3%. At the same time, the overall U.S. suicide rate rose just 36%. Suicides among males increased each year throughout the study period, while suicides among females increased from 2010 onwards. Male suicides increased from 31 during the first 10 years to 67 in the second decade, results show. Female suicides increased from 9 to 21 between the two decades. There were nine deaths every two years in male athletes and three… read on > read on >

Desks that require folks to stand or move as they work also might help them produce better results on the job, a new study suggests. People’s brains became sharper when working at a desk that made them stand, step or walk rather than sit, results show. Reasoning scores in particular improved when at an active workstation, researchers said. “It is feasible to blend movement with office work that previously would have been done during long periods of sitting,” said senior study author Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a preventive cardiologist with the Mayo Clinic. “Active workstations may offer a way to potentially improve cognitive performance and overall health, simply by moving at work.” For the study, researchers recruited 44 participants to test four different office settings during four consecutive days. The first day, people sat at a typical desk for work. The next three days, they worked at an elevated desk, either standing, walking on a treadmill or using a stepper. Typing speed slowed down slightly at active workstations, but the accuracy of their typing was not affected, researchers found. On the other hand, tests revealed that their brain function either improved or stayed the same when they were active while working. The participants scored better on reasoning tests when standing, stepping or walking, compared to sitting, results show. The new study was published April 4 in… read on > read on >

Smacking a 100-mile-an-hour fastball or shooting down a fast-moving alien invader in a video game might involve more than fast reflexes, researchers report. Elite gamers and pro athletes may also have a hidden vision advantage over others, a new study finds. Some people can perceive rapidly changing visual cues better than others, researchers reported April 1 in the journal PLOS One. This advantage in eye tracking could explain why some people are better in settings where response time is critical, researchers said. “We don’t yet know how this variation in visual temporal resolution might affect our day-to-day lives, but we believe that individual differences in perception speed might become apparent in high-speed situations where one might need to locate or track fast-moving objects, such as in ball sports, or in situations where visual scenes change rapidly, such as in competitive gaming,” said lead researcher Clinton Haarlem, a doctoral candidate with Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. The rate at which people perceive the world is known as “temporal resolution,” researchers said. Some people effectively see more images per second than others. To quantify this, researchers asked participants to look at a flickering light source. If the light flickered faster than a person’s visual threshold, they saw the light as steady rather than blinking. Some participants saw the light as completely still when it was flashing about… read on > read on >

Seniors wound up with lower blood pressure after they were coached to get up and move more often, a new study says. Health coaching successfully reduced sitting time for a group of older adults by just over 30 minutes a day, according to a report published March 27 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Sitting less led to a reduction of nearly 3.5 points in the seniors’ average blood pressure, researchers said. By comparison, increased physical activity typically leads to an average 4-point reduction in blood pressure and weight loss an average 3-point reduction, they noted. “Our findings are really promising because sitting less is a change that may be easier for people than increasing physical activity, especially for older adults who are more likely to be living with restrictions like chronic pain or reduced physical function,” said lead researcher Dori Rosenberg, a senior scientific investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle. Older adults typically sit between 65% and 80% of their waking hours, researchers said in background notes. Such sedentary behavior can lead to heart disease and diabetes. The new study involved 283 seniors ages 60 to 89 covered by Kaiser Permanente’s health system in Washington state. The seniors all received a tabletop standing desk, an activity tracker and 10 health coaching sessions during a six-month period. In these sessions, participants… read on > read on >