Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injuries are a devastating injury to the knee. Despite huge amounts of research going into our understanding of their management and prevention they are becoming more common. One of the biggest increases in numbers is in the youth population –those between...
A number of sports like to have training camps for their athletes in the New Year, especially before school goes back. This enables them to spend time with the team and have multiple sessions a day with them to work on many aspects of training...
When you are exercising at moderate to high intensities, the muscles demand blood to supply energy to exercise. The body therefore shuts down blood flow to other regions to allow an increased flow to the muscles. In the heat, our cooling mechanism is managed by increasing...
Any death is a tragedy to those close by, but an unexpected death to someone who is still relatively young can affect communities. Sudden cardiac deaths are rare but traumatic when they occur. These are most commonly seen in what appear to be fit and...
You may know of RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) as the acronym for what you do immediately after an injury. There are variations of this RICED (D- Diagnosis), PRICED (P- Prevention) and there are even ones for what you don’t do – HARM (Heat, Alcohol,...
What is the ACL? The ACL is the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee. It is one of the 4 major ligaments which provide structural support to the knee. Damage to the ACL is a major injury and it may take up to 18 months to...
Current guidelines for low back pain recommend against routine use of plain x-rays (XR), or other imaging tests such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), or computerised tomography (CT) unless there is the presence of red flags, or your low back pain (LBP) has been present...
Just about all major sports have guidelines for returning to play following a concussion. These are based on an international set of guidelines, established by a very large group of experts on concussion. Every couple of years these experts get together and discuss what new...
Let’s talk about the who, what, and when should you use strapping? Firstly, you can’t just ‘strap’ something, you need to know what and why you are strapping it. Using the ankle as an example, as this is the most commonly strapped joint, probably up to...
How can exercise help back pain? Where does exercise fit in to the picture of back pain and it’s management? For many years research had been telling us exercise is good, not only to help prevent back pain, but also in its recovery. Many studies have...