These Sports Medicine Advances Have Helped Players Recover Faster
By
Richard Janvrin
Contributor Updated: 03 October 2024
Richard Janvrin Contributor
Richard has been writing about sports since he was a teenager. Still, his first professional role came in 2015, covering all things NFL and fantasy football-related. From there, in December 2018, he started in the sports betting industry, covering sportsbook reviews before arriving to where he is today.
Sports Medicine Advances
While you’re browsing a list of betting sites to make wagers on your favorite teams and players, have you ever stopped to wonder how advanced sports medicine and technology have come to help players stay on the field?
In the NFL in 2023, New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles in Week 1. If the Jets remained in playoff contention, Rodgers said he could’ve probably come back for that final playoff push.
In years past, an Achilles injury not only meant the end of a season but perhaps a career-ender. The same can be said for an ACL tear.
Below, I want to look at some methods being used to help our favorite athletes recover and stay on the field.
Let’s dive in.
- Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy
- Cryotherapy Chambers
- Stem Cell Therapy
- Genomic Testing
- Virtual Reality Training
- Wearable Devices
Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy
Platelet-rich plasma therapy, or PRP, is a therapy doctors use to help speed up the body’s natural healing process. This therapy and sports medicine technology is mostly used for athletes treating joints and tendons and even to help with back injuries.
With this therapy, blood is drawn, and a centrifuge separates the platelets into red and white blood cells. The cells are then recombined using plasma injected into the injured area.
This is a common practice in sports medicine as there’s very little risk due to the procedure using your blood.
According to Morton’s Neuroma, dozens of professional athletes who have engaged with sports medicine and fitness technology, including Ray Lewis, Matt Forte, Troy Polamalu, and many more, have done the therapy.
Cryotherapy Chambers
If you like the cold, a cryotherapy chamber, a highlight of sports medicine technology, may challenge that.
This technology exposes the patient to extremely cold temperatures for a short period. Sessions can be performed on the entire body or for a more localized treatment. These sessions typically only last a few minutes, and temperatures can reach up to -250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Why do athletes expose themselves to this? The primary reason is to reduce bodily inflammation. This can help with things like arthritis, tendinitis, and more. Other reasons to use it include relieving pain, improving circulation, and helping muscles recover.
Some of the world’s top athletes, such as LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Usain Bolt, engage in this type of sports medicine and fitness technology.
Stem Cell Therapy
If you’ve watched sports for any length of time, chances are you’ve heard the topic of stem cells discussed.
What this therapy does is use stem cells to help repair damaged tissues in your body. These cells can become different types of cells, including bone and muscle, but they can also divide and renew.
There are three types of stem cell therapy most often used:
- Embryonic: As expected, these stem cells are taken from early-stage embryos, but this type of stem cell therapy is highly regulated.
- Adult: This is probably the most common type of stem cell therapy. These stem cells are found in places like bone marrow but are more limited in the type of cell they can become.
- iPSC: This therapy takes adult stem cells and genetically reprograms them. The point of the reprogramming is to make them more like embryonic cells, which are more potent and have the chance to become any type of cell.
Stem cells are most commonly used to treat autoimmune issues, torn ligaments, and cartilage damage, and they can even help with various types of cancer.
Due to regulatory issues, it’s not uncommon for athletes to seek treatment outside the United States. For example, in the early 2010s, Major League Baseball pitcher Bartolo Colon had stem cell treatment in the Dominican Republic. This helped revive the player’s career and become a key cog in the New York Yankees starting pitcher rotation.
Understanding stem cells more as time goes on could be atop the list of sports medicine advancements.
Genomic Testing
We all have genetic predispositions to certain illnesses or proneness to certain things, and athletes use genomic testing to help predict potential timelines for injuries.
For example, this could be used to assist with personalized training and nutrition regimens. Understanding an individual athlete’s make-up concerning endurance or the predisposition to potential injury could help in making a well-crafted individualized plan to keep that athlete healthy for as long as possible.
This could also reveal things about vitamins and micronutrients, which go hand-in-hand with individualized regimens.
The idea behind such testing in sports medicine is to help prevent and manage potential hurdles in a player’s career.
Virtual Reality Training
We may think of virtual reality as something involving an Oculus or playing video games, but this technology can be quite effective in helping athletes train and engage in rehabilitation. The idea is to create an immersive environment in which the athlete can engage in exercises. This type of sports medicine is new and constantly evolving as this technology itself improves.
This isn’t necessarily just for physical recovery, either. This could be used to help with mental focus or decision-making. Athletes often need to make split-second decisions, such as identifying an open receiver, hitting a baseball, or anticipating a spot to make a shot from. These activities can help with that while keeping costs low and from the comfort of almost anywhere.
Wearable Devices
The term “wearable devices” may sound broad because so many types of devices can be used for this. This could be something as simple as a smartwatch. These devices aim to monitor things like heart rate, how you sleep, and more.
Other devices, like GPS software, can determine your performance. The NFL routinely uses these to track player speed. Understanding an athlete’s performance can help design the next iteration of protection/padding and make rules to keep athletes safe.
Another device commonly worn by athletes is motion sensors. These can monitor acceleration and overall movement patterns. Understanding this data more can help make adjustments to a player’s mechanics and prevent injury. This can be found in sports like tennis or baseball that involve sudden, quick movements and turns.
The primary functions of these numerous wearable devices are to monitor health, manage recoveries, optimize performance, and make data-driven and precise decisions.
