Non-specific chronic low back pain is a multifactorial pathology with a significant impact on quality of life. Physical activity is a major axis of treatment to improve pain and functional capacity through structured exercises, but also to fight against physical deconditioning. It is therefore advised to perform leisure time physical activity regularly and in an adapted way. There is no contraindication to practice sports activities but they should be performed with special attention not to increase the symptoms. This article aims to evaluate the effects of different types of physical activity in chronic low back pain to help the practitioner to advise at best his patients and prescribe appropriate physical activity, source of pleasure and health benefits.
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Over the last years, cardiac rehabilitation services have expanded their indication to include not just patients after myocardial infarction or surgery, but also a variety of non-acute cardiovascular disease (CVD) states like stable coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease, neurovascular disease as well as asymptomatic patients with no history of CVD but with a constellation of cardiovascular risk factors, especially metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus. In 2015, 110 ambulatory cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation programs existed in Switzerland: 57 for cardiac, 17 for peripheral artery disease and 36 for diabetes rehabilitation.
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Arthroplasty is a common procedure in orthopedic surgery to address severe osteoarthritis (OA) in the hip joint. With the burgeoning “baby boomer” generation and older athletes who wish to return to competitive levels of sports, understanding how sporting activity affects arthroplasty outcomes is becoming exceptionally important.
The demand for total joint arthroplasty is projected to increase in the first three decades of the twenty-first century. Patients who have had a hip or knee replacement are more and more expecting to participate in athletics after rehabilitation.
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Strategies to improve cognitive aging are highly needed. Among those, promotion of exercise and physical activity appears as one of the most attractive and beneficial intervention. Indeed, results from basic and clinical studies suggest that exercise and physical activity have positive effects on cognition in older persons without cognitive impairment, as well as in those with dementia. Despite inconsistent results, aerobic exercise appears to have the strongest potential to enhance cognition. However, even limited periods of walking (45 minutes, three times a week, over a 6-month period) have also been shown to enhance cognition, particularly executive functions.
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Physical activity (PA) and exercise training (ET) are central and indispensable components for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD). In healthy individuals, PA reduces all-cause and CV mortality and has confirmed beneficial effects on the cardiovascular risk profile. In secondary prevention, PA counselling und ET are two of the core components of a multidisciplinary cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program. Exercise-based CR is an established strategy in the secondary prevention of CV disease. It improves survival, reduces hospital admissions, improves cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and quality of life (QoL).
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The knowledge of the effects of conditioning muscle activities on the following performances is highly relevant in professional sports. In this paper, an attempt was made to analyse the direct effects of a sensorimotor training (SMT) on the explosive leg strength. Therefore 28 physically active subjects were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (IG) or a control group (CG). Subjects were tested on two separate days. Isometric maximum voluntary contractions were investigated in a leg press. Maximum rate of force development RFDmax as well as neuromuscular activation of the quadriceps and hamstring muscles were analysed in all subjects and compared between days.
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A career in elite sports requires a significant investment of time. Professional sportsmen, such as Swiss ice hockey players, are intensively involved in the system of high-performance sports. From junior years through to the end of a professional career, a high investment of time is necessary to develop the appropriate sporting achievements. Building an ice hockey career occurs at the same time as the school phase of vocational training. The high time-demand of sport training can affect the choices and occupational opportunities offered at this time. After the end of the professional career and hockey players are forced to enter ’normal’ working life.
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The intermittent fasting of Ramadan could affect various aspects of body physiology and biochemistry important to athletic success. Sleep time may be shortened. Disturbance of psychomotor performance, impaired vigilance and slower reactions can be observed particularly during afternoon.
Food intake is limited to night-time meals. Well disciplined athletes usually maintain energy balance unless daily energy expenditures are very high. Daytime fluid depletion is inevitable if athletes exercise in the heat.
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The human foot is a flexible structure characterized by a pronounced medial longitudinal arch (MLA) that compresses and recoils during running. That process is actively driven by the intrinsic foot muscles and requires a proper stability of the MLA. This introduces the concept of foot core stability. Because the intrinsic foot muscles are often neglected by clinicians and researchers, the purpose of this article is to provide some guidelines for incorporating foot core training in prevention or rehabilitation programmes for runners.
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Introduction: Vitamin D deficiency is very prevalent in world population and growing evidence shows that also athletes are affected. Vitamin D deficiency causes beside bone disorders, musculoskeletal pain, muscle weakness and is associated with many other health disorders. For athletes in particular it may impair training and performance, prolong recovery and increase risk of injury. We therefore analyzed vitamin D levels in Swiss athletes focusing on prevalence according to age, gender, seasonal variations, indoor or outdoor sports, sunscreen use and vitamin D supplementation.
Methods: This study was performed in a convenient sample of 655 Swiss Olympic athletes over one year.
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Iron deficiency is frequent among athletes. All types of iron deficiency may affect physical performance and should be treated. The main mechanisms by which sport leads to iron deficiency are an increased iron demand, an elevated iron loss and a blockage of iron absorption due to hepcidin bursts. As a baseline set of blood tests, haemoglobin, haematocrit, mean cellular volume (MCV), mean cellular haemoglobin (MCH) and serum ferritin levels are the important parameters to monitor iron deficiency. In healthy male and female athletes >15 years, ferritin values <15µg/l are equivalent to empty, values from 15 to 30µg/l to low iron stores. Therefore a cut-off of 30µg/l is appropriate.
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“Tennis and golfer’s elbow” are common pathologies due to overload of forearm extensors and flexors, and actually occur mostly outside tennis and golf sports. Several differential diagnoses of medial and lateral epicondylitis have to be excluded as there are a number of other conditions with similar clinical symptoms. The high rate of spontaneous recovery has to be considered in treatment. Evidence based conservative treatment comprises excentric physiotherapy, local injections, and physical methods. Surgery is reserved for patients with persistence of symptoms for more than one year despite non-surgical treatment.
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The knee joint is affected in up to 30% of all sport injuries. A minor precentage of it are tendon injuries. For acute tendon injuries, quadriceps tendon rupture and patellar tendon rupture are most frequent. Beside that, ruptures of distal hamstring tendons or the popliteus tendon may occur. For chronic tendon injuries in sports, the jumpers knee and the runners knee are most frequent. Also insertional enthesopathy of the quadriceps tendon, of the iliotibial band, of the hamstring tendons may occur, furthermore a tendinitis or bursitis at the pes anserinus. These injuries are explained in this article focussing on symptoms, diagnostics and therapy.
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While lesions of the achilles tendon and posterior tibial tendon are common and well known, lesions of other ankle bridging tendons are rare and literature is sparse. However, many of these lesions are equally relevant in terms of maintaining the complex functionality of the foot. Such pathologies include tendinitis, tenosynovitis as well as partial and complete tears. If the continuity of the affected tendon is maintained, conservative treatment is appropriate. In cases of ruptures, operative therapy is often needed. Depending on the defect size and retraction of the tendon, auto- or allograft have to be used.
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The tendon has to be seen functionally within the muscle-tendon-unit. The tendon has to transmit the force that is produced by the muscle, but acts also as a spring that stores energy. The tendon itself consists of three parts: the tendon-bone insertion, the mid-portion area, and the muscle-tendon junction. The biomechanical properties belong primarily on type I collagen, that degenerates in case of tendinopathy.
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Background
Orienteering takes place in a range of different areas including mountains and woodlands, whereby motoric and coordinative requirements on the orienteers differ strongly depending on the respective terrain. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in average speed of orienteers in three terrain types in Switzerland: Alps, Jura and Mittelland.
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