Young athletes who spend all their time training for one sport are at a higher risk for severe overuse injuries, a new study found.
Researchers revealed that kids who played a sport for more hours a week than their age — such as a 13-year-old who plays baseball 14 or more hours a week — are 70 percent more likely to suffer from an overuse injury.
“We should be cautious about intense specialization in one sport before and during adolescence,” said study author Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, medical director of primary care sports medicine at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, in a statement. “Among the recommendations we can make, based on our findings, is that young athletes should not spend more hours per week in organized sports than their ages.”
Overuse injuries observed included stress fractures, elbow ligament injuries and other cartilage and bone injuries, and can stop a child from playing sports for one to six months or even longer.
Kids who are baseball pitchers are particularly at risk for elbow and shoulder injuries.
“Some of these kids just play baseball for 11 months out of the year, starting when they’re 9-years-old and into their 30s and 40s,” said Dr. Christopher Wahl, chief of sports medicine at the University of California, San Diego department of orthopedic surgery. “We’ve almost ruined an entire generation of baseball pitchers. They pitch so much from when they’re so small, and that’s all they do, so they’re more apt to wear out their arm or shoulder. Cross-training in different sports prevents one part of the body from getting worn out.”
3D Mammograms Help Those With Dense Breast Tissue
Getting a 3D mammogram could help with earlier detection of breast cancer, particularly for women with dense breast tissue.
While standard, 2D mammography detects 78 percent of all breast cancers, 3D mammograms increased cancer detection rate by 11 percent, according to research presented at the American Roentgen Ray Society's annual meeting this month.
Dense breast tissue is a well-established predictor for breast cancer, and around 40 percent of women have dense tissue. Ninety percent of them don't know it.
A 3D mammogram shows more detail than a 2D mammogram, and provides images similar to a CT scan. The machine moves around the breast in an arc and takes multiple images. Because they were just approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2011, it is still not covered by many insurances companies and isn't yet widely available.
Ginkgo Biloba Denounced By Public Interest Agency
The popular herbal supplement ginkgo biloba, often promoted as a memory aid, has been found to cause cancer in rats, according to a study by the government’s National Toxicology Program.
Researchers gave the rats ginkgo biloba extract five times a week over two years and found it “caused cancers of the thyroid gland in male and female rats and cancers of the liver in male and female mice,” according to the study.
Ginkgo biloba is also found in herbal teas and energy drinks. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration has warned energy drink companies that the use of the supplement in drinks is not deemed safe or recommended.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has advised consumers to stop buying ginkgo biloba, saying the evidence that it benefits memory or concentration “has been dubious, at best. The pretend benefits are now outweighed by the real risk of harm.”
Number of Food Poisoning Cases Stalls
Every year one in six people in the United States — that’s 48 million people — get food poisoning from contaminated meals, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That number has remained the same for a number for years, and salmonella is still the most commonly diagnosed and reported cause of food poisoning. E. coli levels last year were similar to ones in 2006 to 2008, though in the past “substantial declines were observed following regulatory change and improvement in the food industry that particularly targeted ground beef,” said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the division of foodborne, waterborne and environmental diseases at the CDC.
Last year, the United States’ food surveillance program recorded about 19,500 infections, 4,500 hospitalizations and 68 deaths.
Erinn Connor is a staff writer for Health Matters With Dr. Sanjay Gupta