Study of Harvard athletes finds different effect of endurance, strength training.

22-Apr-2008 -- For the first time researchers are beginning to understand exactly how various forms of exercise impact the heart. Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, in collaboration with the Harvard University Health Services, have found that 90 days of vigorous athletic training produces significant changes in cardiac structure and function and that the type of change varies with the type of exercise performed. Their study appears in the April Journal of Applied Physiology.

“Most of what we know about cardiac changes in athletes and other physically active people comes from ‘snapshots,’ taken at one specific point in time. What we did in this first-of-a-kind study was to follow athletes over several months to determine how the training process actually causes change to occur,” says Aaron Baggish, MD, a fellow in the MGH Cardiology Division and lead author of the study.

DALLAS — April 16, 2008 — A new study in mice indicates that overeating, rather than the obesity it causes, is the trigger for developing metabolic syndrome, a collection of heath risk factors that increases an individual’s chances of developing insulin resistance, fatty liver, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

How and where the body stores excess, unused calories appears to matter most when determining a person’s risk of developing metabolic syndrome, researchers at
UT Southwestern Medical Center suggest.

7-Apr-2008 -- It’s Ingrid Bell’s turn at bat. She steps up to the plate, awaiting the pitch. A 70-mph fastball soars toward her. She swings and connects with the ball.

Foul ball! Everyone cheers for her anyway.

This baseball game’s not taking place on a field, and there’s no real bat or ball to be seen. Mrs. Bell is playing the Nintendo Wii as part of her occupational therapy. She is among 30 Parkinson’s disease patients participating in a Medical College of Georgia study to determine if occupational therapy enhances the treatment of the disease.

Medical College study on pitching mound height provides insight into baseball injuries

23-Mar-2008 -- A study involving several Major League Baseball pitchers indicates that the height of the pitcher’s mound can affect the athlete’s throwing arm motion, which may lead to potential injuries because of stress on the shoulder and elbow.

The study was led by William Raasch, M.D., associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who also is the head team physician for the Milwaukee Brewers. Major League Baseball funded the study in an effort to help prevent injuries among professional baseball players.

13-Mar-2008 -- Afterschool programs can modestly increase the amount of physical activity among girls in middle school, according to new results from the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls (TAAG), a multiple site, community based study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.

Results are published in the article, "Promoting Physical Activity in Middle School Girls," in the March issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Arthroscopic surgery successful in active patients for over a decade

SAN FRANCISCO, 8-Mar-2008 -- Young, athletic, first-time shoulder dislocation patients benefit from arthroscopic surgery long term, according to a study released today at the 2008 American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine Specialty Day at The Moscone Center. The study found that for highly active patients, surgery, rather than conservative methods, yielded excellent results.

“In young, active patients, there were statistics as high as 92 percent that they would dislocate their shoulder again when conservative approaches like rest and immobilization in a sling were used,” says Robert A. Arciero, MD, of the Keller Army Hospital in West Point, NY. “If we had an operation with a 90 percent failure rate, we would abandon the procedure. My thought was, why should we embrace a treatment with such a high failure rate”.