SportsGeezer

Another Gender Difference: Sports Injuries

While Geezer is constructing his proof that male athletes injure themselves better than women athletes, readers can see what the more reliable Judy Foreman says about the sports injuries that women seem drawn to: tears in the ACL, plantar fasciitis, compartment syndrome, shin splints in runners, and kneecap pain.  Foreman, the premier fitness writer for the Boston Globe, tells us that women's knees are more vulnerable than men's because the angle between the hip and the knee - is greater in women than in men. While wide hips are good for childbearing, Foreman writes, they mean there is more stress on the knee in moves like landing from a jump and twisting. This torque can shred the ACL, a ligament that helps stabilize the knee,and is a major reason why female athletes have four times more ACL tears than men do. Read more about sports injuries that women just can't resist in the Boston Globe.

The Great Outdoors Gets Old

For many Americans, the great outdoors appears to have been replaced by the technology-rich indoors.
The Scientific American reports that Americans have been visiting national parks and other natural reserves less and less since 1987, and that the popularity of outdoor activities like camping and hunting is on the wane. Sciam cites a study who results were recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, showing that, with the exception of a slight increase in backpacking, outdoor pursuits peaked between 1981 and 1991 after 50 years of steady increase and have been declining at roughly 1 percent per year since for an overall drop of as much as 25 percent.
Read more in the Scientific American.

A Readers' Guide to His or Her Replaceable Parts

Geezer would like to thank the Washington Post for its colorful, interactive, and vaguely macabre feature on replaceable body parts. The newspaper notes that 25 million Americans have some kind of medical implant, such as knees, lenses in eyes, or pacemakers. Have a look see. and reserve you body parts now.

Chondroitin Does Squat for Joint Pain

In 2005, Americans spent $810 million on glucosamine-chondroitin supplements, which were supposed to relieve arthritis and other joint pain. Now comes a study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggesting that that money, or at least that part of it that went for chondroitin, was not well-spent. The L.A. Times reports that when researchers looked closely at data from three large clinical studies, which included 1,553 patients, they found virtually no difference in pain reduction between the chondroitin and placebo groups. The researchers also looked at X-rays of the patients' joints and found little difference between the two groups.  And what about glucosomine? That's another story, but one with a similar ending.

Exercise Builds Brain Cells

OK, so far researchers know only that exercise builds brain cells in mice, but at least one experiment suggests that it could do the same for humans. The Scientific American reports that Dr. Scott Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, and Fred Gage, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California worked together on research that indicated that, when mice exercised, they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.
The researchers then moved on to human subjects. Sciam reports that  they recruited 11 healthy adults and made them undergo a three-month aerobic exercise regimen. They did MRIs of their brains before and after the three month period, and they also measured the fitness of each volunteer by measuring oxygen volume before and after the training program.  Small and Gage found that exercise generated blood flow to the dentate gyrus of the people, and the more fit a person got, the more blood flow the MRI detected. The two researchers reported that "the remarkable similarities between the exercise-induced cerebral blood volume changes in the hippocampal formation of mice and humans suggest that the effect is mediated by similar mechanisms."  Read more.

German Study Questions Benefits of Low-Intensity Work-Outs

How German is it? A recent study at the University of Saarland in Saarbrucken has found that low intensity workouts do relatively little to build fitness, at least when fitness is described as the ability to use oxygen efficiently. The Scientific American reports that the German study randomized 39 healthy people to a control group who did not exercise, a group who exercised at moderate intensity 5 days a week for 30 minutes, and a low-intensity group instructed to keep their heart rate at a level about 150 beats per minute.  The low-intensity group worked out at an average of 71 percent of their maximum heart rate, while the moderate intensity group got their heart rates up to 79 percent of the maximum.  After 12 weeks, the moderate intensity group was able to use oxygen more efficiently, and showed greater reductions in heart rate during exercise. "If you have a healthy cardio-circulatory system," says study lead author Tim Meyer, "there is no reason to avoid intense exercise."

Boomers Suffer Wreckage of Aerobics

The New York Times reports that fewer than half of the 300 gyms and health clubs recently surveyed by IDEA offered aerobics classes, and that number continues to decline. Three reasons for that, the Times asserts, are the back problems, hip problems and foot problems now experienced by many who did aerobics religiously in earlier decades. Another reason, of course, is that fitness has become more sophisticated, with new offerings that work the body in kinder and gentler ways.
Read more about the pain of aerobics past in the New York Times, and tell us about your experience in the comment space below.

Exercise Neither Helps Nor Hurts Knee Pain

The next time you hear someone blame their knee pain on too much exercise, tell them to take walk, or a jog, or a run. If researchers at Boston University School of Medicine are correct, the exercise will not make their pain any worse--or any better. The Ivanhoe Newswire reports that BU researchers followed nearly 1,300 people over about 10 years, and found no relationship between physical activity, like walking or jogging, and the development of knee osteoarthritis. Previous studies have suggested exercise can protect against the development of knee pain, while others have concluded it may lead to the condition. Read more.

Knee Problems? Try Pumping Up Quads

The pain and the motion limitations caused by some knee problems may be alleviated by strengthening quadriceps. That, at least, is the opinioin of researchers at Boston University and UC San Francisco, who looked at MRIs of 265 men and women suffering from knee osteoarthritis. The scientists measured the amount of cartilage lost over periods of 15 months and 30 months, and tracked it with the  participants' quadriceps strength.  The L.A. Times reports that those who had the strongest quads had the least cartilage loss. Those with the weakest quadriceps had about 20 percent cartilage loss over time, whereas those with a medium amount of quadriceps strength had just slightly more. The paper reports that the strongest group had about 60 percent less deterioration than the weakest group. 
Read more in the LA Times.

Market for Joint Replacement is Booming

Hip and knee replacements are all the rage, among a certain Canadian set that is anything but jet: the middle-aged and overweight. CBSnews reports that the number of hip and knee replacement surgeries in Canada has climbed 87 percent in the past 10 years. The numbers, taken from an annual report by the Canadian Institute for Health, also show that in 2004-2005, nine out 10 patients who had knee replacements were considered overweight or obese. Eight out of 10 hip replacement patients also carried extra pounds. The institute also found that the largest rate of increase in the procedures was among people aged 45 to 54. Hip replacements for that age group doubled over 10 years, while knee replacements nearly quadrupled.