Sports Medicine

Sports medicine entails dealing with athletic injuries, however many of the same injuries occur in everyday life.  The sports medicine approach can be applied to weekend warriors or injured workers, and even in degenerative arthritic pain.  This approach is aggressive, with an emphasis on rapid recovery to allow the patient to reengage in sports as soon as possible, and the philosophy is the same in non-athletes.  Obviously, the younger and healthier a person is makes a decided difference in recovery, especially in the highly motivated individual.

Utilizing various medical tools such as physical therapy, nutritional optimization, medications, selective injections (corticosteroids and joint lubricants), state of the art technologies (laser therapy, platelet-rich plasma and stem cell technology) can offset some of the effects that are lost with our youth.  Anti-inflammatory medications and cortisone can be used effectively, along with therapeutic exercise and physical therapy, in a vast majority of cases.  Jack LaLanne and Frank Zane are prime examples of maintaining the highest level of fitness, even with advanced age. 

Stubborn injuries, however, may call for advanced treatment.  An increasing number of elite, professional athletes are turning to newer medical breakthroughs, such as platelet-rich plasma (PRP) or stem cell therapy, as a method to accelerate the healing process or to jump start healing in chronic, unrelenting injuries.