New York Times health writer Gina Kolata asks the potentially expensive and time-consuming question:If you have a sports injury, when do you go to the doctor, and when do you tough it out? To find out, Kolata asked several athlete-doctors, who, it turns out, almost never ask doctors for advice about a sports injury. But neither do they play through pain. They simply stop doing whatever causes the pain, and do something else instead. If you come in with a sports injury like a
sore knee or hamstring or heel or hip, says one doc, most doctors would just tell you to rest. Thomas Best, the president-elect of the American College of Sports
Medicine and director of the division of sports medicine at Ohio State University, tells Kolata that people should see a doctor if they are not recovering
in the usual period of time. But why not go? Because, one doc says, you are likely to end up with an MRI that will find other problems like small rips in tendons that are not causing pain and don’t really need to be treated, but could be treated by overzealous doctors.
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Wow. Common sense. However I would add this- if you should experience a sudden, sharp, knife-like disabling pain in the knee while skiing that says “fall now before you do more damage”, I would have it checked out professionally. Turns out that RICE and 3 weeks off the skis was all I needed because I have a great, conservative knee Doc, but ya neva know. Worth checking.
Though this topic is of great interest and use to all the followers, I do feel there is another side to treatment. We have decades of sports injury experience to our advantage, and one thing we have learned is to keep the athlete competing and training. Therefore not all doctors will tell you to rest, but rather to alter or reduce activity. Furthermore, doctors like us use conservative treatments and modalities to not only help the atheltes recover faster but help prevent the activities. DrG