This week's best of MomsTeam.com, a website devoted health and safety in youth sports:
- The conventional diet wisdom from the past 30 years -- that a low fat and high-carbohydrate diet is optimum for weight control, general health and athletic performance -- is under increasing assault by those who recommend precisely the opposite, suggested a provocative editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
- It might come as a surprise to many that the prevailing media narrative -- that concussions or repetitive subconcussive blows "cause" chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and that there is a proven link between the two – has yet to established through scientific research. As MomsTeam Senior Health & Safety Editor Lindsay Barton reported, an increasing number in the medical, scientific, and concussion research communities now wonder if the media narrative has gotten too far ahead of the science, a concern that may might prompt some in the media to begin taking a more nuanced approach to their reporting on CTE.
- In her long road to recovery from post-concussion syndrome (PCS), two-time Olympic hockey star Caitlin Cahow had the best help a daughter could ask for: A mom (a doctor, no less!) who was there for her, no questions asked. Now that Caitlin's recovery is complete and her sights are set on a legal career, her mom shared with MomsTeam's Brooke de Lench her perspective on new treatment therapies that offer hope to those with PCS.
- When used as part of an appropriately designed exercise and nutrition program, resistance training can help battle two of the growing youth health epidemics: obesity and type 2 diabetes. In addition, a well-designed resistance training program might help in preventing sport- and recreation-related injuries among youth athletes, said Doug Wolf, an athletic trainer in the Children's Sports Medicine Department of Columbus (Ohio) Children's Hospital.
- If you are a parent with a child who has suffered a concussion in the past, you might think you are concussion savvy. But as the mother of a high school hockey player with a history of multiple concussions explains otherwise in this cautionary video. She discovered three to four weeks after her daughter suffered a third concussion warming up for an ice hockey game during her sophomore year in high school, she woefully was unprepared for the "mysterious journey" that lay ahead for both of them.
-- MomsTeam.com and NFLEvolution.com
