Most of us realize the importance of hydration to exercise. Drinking water before, during, and after workouts regulates your body temperature, delivers nutrients and oxygen to your cells, and removes waste. But did you know that proper hydration is also an important part of preventing injuries?

Fractures are not all the same, and neither are their treatments. A broken toe, for example, can be much simpler to treat than a compressed vertebrae or shattered leg. Sometimes, caring for a fracture requires more than a splint or cast. 

Competitive athletes learn from their first day of training that in order to become better, stronger, and faster, they need to train harder than they have ever done before. They also know that overtraining is a real possibility, this creates a delicate balance between training hard and getting the proper rest.

Have you ever worked out hard without taking a break, only to find yourself injured or in pain? Maybe you’ve tried high-intensity interval training, but you didn’t have the patience to wait a full minute before your next sprint or set of push-ups. Or perhaps you trained for a marathon but skipped a rest day. Or you rushed through a weights workout at the gym without pausing between sets.

Quiz: If you’ve just hurt yourself — for example, sprained your ankle or tweaked your shoulder hitting a tennis serve  — do you ice the injury or apply heat to it?

Or how about chronic soreness or swelling from conditions like osteoarthritis or lower back pain? What’s more effective: heat or cold?

These are questions many people have, and a surprising number aren’t certain about the answer.

What is sports medicine?

Orthopedic Sports Medicine is a subspecialty of orthopedics that focuses on the sports related injuries. The sports medicine specialty was created out of a need to help people recover faster and return to play. It is part of the larger field called orthopedics, a medical specialty that focuses on the musculoskeletal injuries (bones, joints, ligaments, muscles, tendons,...

Platelet Rich Plasma therapy (PRP) is becoming increasingly popular for treating tissue injuries and joint pain. In PRP treatment, a physician prepares an enriched supply of a patient's own blood, then injects it at the site of an injury to help promote faster healing of chronic injuries like tendinitis, sprains, and some milder forms of arthritis.

Bone growth stimulation, or BGS, is a form of therapy often used to promote healing after a spinal fusion surgery or fracture. BGS may promote faster natural healing in fractures that may be slow to heal on their own. Here is what you need to know If your orthopedic specialist recommends bone growth (osteogenesis) stimulation.