AAP Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness Blog

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The Uneven Playing Field

BY THE TIME JANELLE PIERSON SPRINTED ONTO THE FIELD for the start of the Florida high-school soccer playoffs in January, she had competed in hundreds of games since joining her first team at 5. She played soccer year-round — often for two teams at a time when the seasons of her school and club teams overlapped. Like many American children deeply involved in sports, Janelle, a high-school senior, had traveled like a professional athlete since her early teens, routinely flying to out-of-state tournaments.

Highlights sports specialization, ACL injuries and gender differences, and quotes Becky Demorest, MD, Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness AAP.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11Girls-t.html?hp for link to article.

Link: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=device-helps-fat-kids-cut

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A monitoring device that cut TV and computer time in half helped young, overweight children eat less and lose weight, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

And it worked without creating a lot of conflict between parents and their kids, they said.

“It reduces all of those battles. The parents have to make one decision. After they make the decision, the device does the rest,” said Leonard Epstein of the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, whose study appears in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

Link: http://www.ohio.com/lifestyle/health/16410186.html?page=all&c=y

By Tracy Wheeler
Beacon Journal medical writer

Published on Saturday, Mar 08, 2008

There’s a reason Nike pays millions of dollars to have its swoosh logo on the shoes — and hats, shirts, pants, socks and sweatbands — of professional athletes.

There’s a reason Gatorade pays millions to put pro athletes in its TV advertisements.

‘’What athletes wear, do, say and take have a huge impact on your young athletes,'’ said Dr. Bernard Griesemer.

And that includes what professional athletes do with steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, he told a roomful of pediatricians and trainers Friday morning as part of Akron Children’s Hospital’s Building Young Athletes — Safe and Healthy seminar.

Griesemer, of Springfield. Mo., is known as an expert on steroid use in young athletes. He helped write the American Academy of Pediatrics’ position statement against anabolic steroid use and was an anti-doping investigator in the 1998 Winter Olympics.

Click here for the full article

HEALTH
Myth Meets Science

By Jeneen Interlandi | NEWSWEEK
Feb 25, 2008 Issue

Everybody’s talking about human growth hormone, and lots of people are using it. But what does it do?

Link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/112768