This week's best of MomsTeam.com, a website that specializes in health and safety issue in youth sports:
- Whether an ankle sprain, ACL rehabilitation, or perhaps rotator cuff tendonitis, it is commonly known that injured athletes can benefit from physical therapy. But what about concussions? Can physical therapy help? Keith Cronin, DPT, explained for parents, coaches and athletes the important role of physical therapy can play following a concussive event.
- Some recent studies have suggested that brain trauma among football players may be less the result of violent helmet-on-helmet collisions that cause concussions as from the cumulative effect of repeated sub-concussive blows, leading to calls by some experts to call for changes in the way contact and collision sports are played and practiced to reduce the total amount of brain trauma a child incurs by limiting the number of hits they sustain in a sports season and over the course of a year and a career. MomsTeam Senior Editor Lindsay Barton provided an updated review of the evidence on the effect of subconcussive hits.
- It is common wisdom that both boys and girls benefit from playing organized sports in a variety of ways, including socially. But do parents also benefit from their involvement? Does the time and money parents spend going to their kids' practices and games benefit them socially? According to a study by researchers at Purdue University in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, the answer seems to be a qualified yes.
- Often overlooked by parents after their teen suffers a sports concussion is the effect that it can have on their ability to drive a car, effecting reaction time, judgment and awareness. The mom of a concussed athlete discussed this in a "teachable moment" video.
- When their child sustains a sports-related concussion, one of the first questions parents are likely to ask their doctor is, "How long will it take for them to recover?" The current international consensus statement on sports-related concussion lists a range of "modifying" factors that may influence the recovery period. But MomsTeam's Lindsay Barton explained other recent guidelines, as well as a number of 2013 studies, list different risk factors for extended recovery, suggesting that it may be a stretch to say that there is consensus among concussion experts.
-- MomsTeam.com and NFLEvolution.com
