Dr. Jeff’s Tips For Recovering From A Sports Injury

The majority of sports-related injuries reported rarely result from blunt-force trauma (e.g., a body area being struck by something). Baseball, football, volleyball, soccer, hockey, and weightlifting are probably the best examples where this kind of injury can occur. But as a rule, the foundation of a sports-related injury will fall into one of only two general categories—overuse and stress or strain. But, no matter how you might get injured, this book explores the various ways and means you can use to get back in the game as fast as possible.

Excerpt  #1:

An overuse injury is just that—performing too many of one or more motions without giving the biological machinery time to adjust and compensate for motion-induced metabolic changes. It is very hard to predict when this type of injury will occur because it depends on so many arbitrary factors (i.e., tissue preconditioning status, overall physiological condition of the individual, age of the individual, etc…) and usually occurs over a longer period of time. The duration of an exercise required to cause an injury in one person may not be the same for another. When it does occur, microtrauma to the muscle and surrounding tissue is most often the cause. This type of injury is extremely hard to diagnose because there is no way to reveal its existence with a scan.

Excerpt #2:

Strains are categorized into one of three grades: as mild (affect only a limited number of muscle fibers), as moderate (up to half of the afflicted muscle fibers are torn) with acute and reproducible pain during continued use, and severe (complete muscle rupture or tendon separation from its anchor-point). This results in significant and undeniable pain and loss of function at the musculo-tendon junction.

Excerpt #3:

There is no documented history of athletes using Epson salts except for what I learned about it as a kid. My grandfather would have me soak in it to cure everything from sprains to bee stings, to infection. This carried over with me all during my early athletic days.  I think its use in sports is a relatively new phenomenon that athletes and trainers are learning to use with great success.