2012 Olympic Athletes: Sports Medicine

In honor of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics tonight, let’s talk about sports medicine. Athletes are a special breed of human beings that push themselves to be better every step of the way. Due to this drive that they possess, they often push themselves through injuries refusing to take proper care of themselves and wanting to get back to the grind of things as quickly as possible. This means that these patients are very unlikely to be willing to take 6-10 weeks of being off of their feet.

Athletes require the best care that can be provided to get them back to the level of athleticism they were at or even better, but they also need to have a quick return. Luckily for these patients, the shape that they are in already gives them a heads up over the average patient because their bodies are in awesome condition. These patients often immediately go for an x-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, the whole work-up. This allows them to know exactly what is going on with their body because they pride themselves on knowing their bodies head to toe.

Athletes are also patients that pay very close to their nutrition. Because of this, they may be difficult to convince that their diet needs to be changed to allow for optimal healing. However, adjusting their diet will encourage healing and will speed the process along.

Athletes will also require constant follow-up on their healing. This means that they will require a lot of communication with their doctor to ensure that they are healing in the way they want to and getting the best care that they can receive. Due to this, the patient physician relationship is very strong and relies strongly on a sense of trust.

There are three key things that we could all stand to learn from athletes.

1.       It is important to know your body so that when something is wrong we know right away.

2.       It is key to have a good patient physician relationship so that you can trust their advice.

3.       Being in the best physical shape that you can will allow you to heal the best that you can.

Enjoy the Olympics games through the next couple of weeks and remember that as soon as you start to experience foot pain, our office would be more than happy to help you schedule an appointment. Our offices serve Methuen, Lowell, North Andover and Tewksbury, Massachusetts.