I’m sure you have heard of the term sports medicine while at a sporting event, watching your favorite football team, or mixed martial arts fighter on TV, but never really gave much thought about the importance of sports medicine to both professional and amateur athletes.

Sports Medicine is the practice of the diagnosis, treatment and preventative treatment of sports-related injuries and illness.  Any athlete who participates in any sport may at some point need professional and clinical treatment for a sport-related injury or illness.

Why should you consider advise or treatment from a sports medicine provider?  Whether you are training for the Olympics, your children are going to be the next soccer superstars, or you’re the weekend warrior CrossFit novice, injuries can and often happen.

Injury and illness risks are much more likely to occur from exercising without proper stretching, warm-up, and cool down techniques. Your provider can help you determine appropriate warm-up techniques, how long and the reason for them based upon your physical activity, intensity and duration. Your provider can help you prevent muscle strains by giving you a detailed plan of stretching and warm-up exercises to implement before your physical activity. In the event of an injury, your sports medicine doctor can offer orthopedic treatment or refer you to an orthopedic specialist in their group. Another option is physical therapy, depending on the extent of your injury, your provider might feel physical therapy is the proper treatment for you.

Sports medicine doctors will not only help with physical injuries, but also diet and nutrition.

Most of the larger, more established sports medicine organizations will have dieticians and nutritionists available.  As your activity level increases so does the demand your body has for a more proper diet and nutrition. With improper diet and nutrition, you might notice a loss of energy, weakness, lack of endurance and stamina due to dehydration, electrolyte imbalance or both. Your provider, after examining you and listening to your routines, exercise, training schedule and diet, can give you specialized advise to your diet and nutritive intake.  Additionally, they can order laboratory tests to have an accurate representation of what your various blood levels are to customize a more complete intake regiment.  These are ways to help you stay healthy and enable your body to be able to sustain peak performance when in demand.

Do you have to seek the advice of a sports medicine provider if you’re just starting out with an exercise routine? No, but at a minimum you should make an appointment to see your physician, let them know your plans to begin exercising. They can give you advise based on their examination of you and your physical condition about the best way to get started to prevent unnecessary injury and illness as well as keep track of your health and physical improvements.

Who knows? Maybe your simple exercise routine will turn into a passion and more intense workouts will follow.  If so, you already took the first step in preventing exercise injury and illness. Your next logical step in this progression is sports medicine. Congratulations on choosing a healthy lifestyle.

The information provided is for general interest only and should not be misconstrued as a diagnosis, prognosis or treatment recommendation. This information does not in any way constitute the practice of medicine, or any other health care profession. Readers are directed to consult their health care provider regarding their specific health situation. Marque Medical is not liable for any action taken by a reader based upon this information.