Protecting Yourself During Fall Sports

Playing physical sports can be a lot of fun. It’s an activity you can do with your friends or family members. It’s important to take care of yourself to avoid injury while playing sports. You can’t completely avoid getting hurt, but you can do everything you can to prevent injury. There are a few easy steps you can take to get the most out of your sports.
1. Equipment
Equipment is important when it comes to working out with sports. Make sure you have the proper sporting equipment that goes with the event you’re participating in. Avoid wearing worn-out shoes and wear a helmet or shoulder pads whenever necessary.
2. Eye and Mouth Protection
Eyewear is important for protection during sports. Goggles are often times worn for soccer, basketball, racquetball, snowboarding, street hockey, baseball and softball. Mouth guards protect your teeth, mouth and tongue. They should always be worn in contact sports, such as wrestling, boxing, martial arts, volleyball, hockey, football and basketball. It’s important to have a dentist fit the mouth guard to your mouth specifically. Never wear your retainer during exercise, practice or play.
3. Wrist, Knee and Elbow Guards
These types of guards are appropriate for inline skating, skateboarding or scooter riding and other similar sports.

Warming Up is Important
Warming up and before a game is an important part of the workout. You should always do this in order to protect your muscles and your joints from injury. You should also stretch afterwards when your muscles are warm to prevent future injury.

Benefits of Sports
Research proves that participating in regular physical activity is a type of preventative medicine. Leading this type of active lifestyle can help reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke. Participating in regular physical activity can help you to maintain a healthy body weight while minimizing the adverse affects of stress. Most experts agree that healthy adults should be getting approximately 30 minutes of physical activity on all or most days. Younger people should aim for between 30 minutes and 60 minutes a day. Moderate intensities, such as taking a brisk walk, cycling or swimming laps can be done in a single session.

Avoid overdoing it. Play sports in moderation and make sure you are practicing sporting activities appropriately. Physical activity can reduce the risk of certain illness, such as colon cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

Stress Relief
Working on regularly by getting regularly physical activity or participating in sporting events, you’ll reap the benefits of reducing your stress levels. If you participate in sporting activities on a regular basis, you will likely lose weight or maintain a healthy body weight, which can reduce stress too!

Children and Teens with Sports Injuries

It is estimated that 30 million children in the US participate in organized sports programs. As more and more children participate in sports and recreational activities, there has been an increase in acute and overuse injuries. Emergency department visits are highest among the school-age to young adult population. Over one-third of school-age children will sustain an injury severe enough to be treated by a doctor or nurse. There are physical and physiological differences between children and adults that may cause children to be more vulnerable to injury. Factors that contribute to this difference in vulnerability include: children have a larger surface area to mass ratio, children have larger heads proportionately, children may be too small for protective equipment, growing cartilage may be more vulnerable to stresses and children may not have the complex motor skills needed for certain sports until after puberty.
The most commonly injured areas of the body include the ankle and knee followed by the hand, wrist, elbow, shin and calf, head, neck and clavicle. Contusions and strains are the most common injuries sustained by young athletes. In early adolescence, apophysitis or strains at the apophyses are common. The most common sites are at the knee (Osgood-Schlatter disease), at the heel (Sever's disease) and at the elbow (Little League Elbow). Non-traumatic knee pain is one of the most common complaints in the young athlete. Patellar Femoral Pain Syndrome (PFPS) has a constellation of causes that include overuse, poor tracking of the patellar, malalignment problems of the legs and foot problems, such as pes planus. In the child, hip pathology can present as knee pain so a careful hip exam is important in the child presenting with an insidious onset of knee pain. Other common injuries in young athletes discussed include anterior cruciate ligament injuries, ankle sprains and ankle fractures.
Prevention of sports and recreation-related injuries is the ideal. There are six potential ways to prevent injuries in general:
I. the pre-season physical examination;
II. medical coverage at sporting events;
III. proper coaching;
IV. adequate hydration;
V. proper officiating; and
VI. proper equipment and field/surface playing conditions.