Advancing Your Health

A new study shows that many young athletes keep on playing after they’ve been injured. And all too often, those injuries could have been prevented. Safe Kids Worldwide, a global nonprofit organization with a mission of preventing unintentional childhood injury, found that kids are suffering from overuse injuries, dehydration, and even head injuries. Kids are under pressure to play at a much higher level and with more intensity than they did decades ago. A pitcher who shows potential may play on two or three different teams during a single season. And Safe Kids found there’s a lot of pressure to stay in the game—even when you’re hurt. A new Safe Kids study shows a third of young athletes who play team sports suffer injuries severe enough to require medical [...]

Oh, how we love our smartphones. With a wealth of information available at the touch of a screen and friends, family, and colleagues a quick text, email, or phone call away, it’s like having the world in the palm of your hand. You wouldn’t expect something so wonderful to cause you pain. Which just adds to the indignity of smartphone thumb. Smartphone thumb may sound silly, but the pain that results from overuse can be text stopping. Smartphone thumb is a repetitive stress injury defined by pain or discomfort in the wrist and thumb when bending either one toward the pinkie finger. You may also experience a dull ache in the base of your thumb or pain and snapping in your thumb when you bend and straighten it. So what exactly causes that pain? Smartphone thumb comes from [...]

If you have osteoarthritis, you already know that exercise can help reduce pain and improve mobility. But did you know that working out at home with a DVD may bring even more relief? According to a study presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), 107 people with osteoarthritis in the knee were randomized to either a DVD-based exercise group or a control group. The DVD group received a DVD-based exercise program along with verbal and hands-on exercise instructions for the first four to eight weeks. Participants in the DVD group reportedly exercised 5.3, 5.0, and 3.8 times per week at three-, six-, and 12-month intervals and had significantly greater improvement in pain and physical function than those in the control group. While exercise did not make a [...]

Dr. Jim Rothermel, a retired ob/gyn, had been living with back and leg pain for more than three years. He was told that he needed extensive open spinal surgery. However, he came to the Emory Spine Center for another opinion and met with Dr. Tim Yoon, an internationally recognized spine surgeon and expert in minimally invasive techniques. Dr. Yoon diagnosed Jim with stenosis and scoliosis. His condition would typically require complex open spinal surgery, but Dr. Yoon determined that using a less invasive method, the XLIF technique, would reduce the stress on his body and reduce recovery time. XLIF (eXtreme Lateral Interbody Fusion) is an approach to spinal surgery in which the spine surgeon accesses the intevertebral disc space and fuses the lumbar spine from the side [...]

Our team gets lots of questions about bone health, ranging from questions like “does  soda decrease my bone strength?”  To “how much calcium and Vitamin D are needed to maintain bone health?” In honor of National Nutrition Month, last week, we shared with you details on the roles of Calcium and Vitamin D in your bone health, and foods you can consume to make sure you get enough of each. This week, we want to share some interesting findings from new research being conducted around soda, and its effect on your bone strength. There are many activities and behaviors that can serve to either improve or worsen bone health, but many recent studies have been conducted to determine if there is a [...]

Our team gets lots of questions about bone health, ranging from questions like “does soda decrease my bone strength?” To “how much calcium and Vitamin D are needed to maintain bone health?” In honor of National Nutrition Month, we want to share some interesting findings from new research being conducted around Vitamin D and Calcium and suggest few ways to get more of both in your diet, if you need them. According to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease, a division of the National Institute of Health, “low Calcium intake throughout life is associated with low bone mass and high fracture rates.” And while Calcium is critical in building bone health and density, Vitamin D is needed for the body to absorb this Calcium. According to findings from the CDC last year, about 1/3 of all Americans are deficient in Vitamin D. So if you’re looking [...]

A couple of years ago, a young recruit of the Atlanta Falcons football team was running during practice when his cleat got caught in the turf, a misstep that led to him both twisting and breaking his foot. The injury turned out to be what’s known as a “Jones fracture,” which is a very specific break in one of the bones in the midportion of the foot. The Falcons recruit went out of state for surgery to insert a screw in his foot that would secure the bone while it healed, but his injury never healed properly, and on the first day of football practice the next year, he rebroke his foot. This time, he decided to find a surgeon in the Atlanta area and was referred to Dr. Sam Labib, [...]

If you have knee pain, you know how debilitating it can be. And if you’re a woman, you have an even greater chance of developing knee pain after you reach 50. In a recent “Health Minute” spot, CNN’s Elizabeth Cohen spoke with Emory orthopedic physician Dr. Ken Mautner about knee pain in women over 50. According to Dr. Mautner, knee pain in younger women tends to come from tendonitis or irritation issues around the knee. However, as women age, earlier knee injuries may lead to arthritis. The American College of Rheumatology reports that nearly two-thirds of women ages 50 and older have some degree of knee pain, and that pain is often due to osteoarthritis. And, Dr. Mautner says, women are more at risk for arthritis than men. “We think [...]

For those people who participate in competitive sports, athletic injury and related pain are not uncommon. Even without being an athlete yourself, you’re likely no stranger to some of the worst injuries that have been sustained by professional athletes. Mary Pierce and her torn ACL, Willis McGahee’s broken leg post-collision on the field, or Tony Saunder’s (Devil Rays’ pitcher) breaking his arm while throwing a pitch are just a few noteworthy examples. More recently, we saw Peyton Manning sidelined with a neck injury that kept him from participating in this year’s NFL season. It is injuries like these and research being conducted in the world of biomechanics that is helping today’s athletes make strides in improving their form and physical durability. Research and evaluation into biomechanics has resulted in new technology that allows experts to capture the movements of an athlete and analyze those movements via specialized software. The takeaways [...]

Emory’s David Pasion, MPT, physical therapist at the Emory Orthopaedics and Spine Center was recently interviewed by the team at CNN in response to a recent article in the New York Times titled, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” As Pasion put is, "Reading that article, if somebody wasn't familiar with yoga or let's say they were planning on doing yoga, if they read that article, they'd say, let me find something else to do. And so, in that aspect, no, I don't think it was fair. There was too many negatives thrown out." While David Pasion agrees that it is possible to sustain injuries while practicing yoga, he also believes the article was “alarmist” and lacked context to present a fair assessment of the health benefits and risks of practicing [...]