AWR Presentation

The Rise of Sports Related Injuries and Their Various Causes

By: Ryleigh Wenker

Thesis: While sports incidents are a common cause of injury, factors like the age one starts becoming active, gender, and the lack of protective gear and proper nutrition have caused a rise in sports related injuries over the last couple of decades.

Poll

Do you or have you ever played a sport?

• yes!

• nope.

• I dabble

Poll

If you answered yes to the last question, how old were you when you started to play sports?

• 4-7 years old

• 8-11 years old

• 11-14 years old

• 14+ years old

Open Ended

If you play/played a sport, what sport did you play?

Poll

If you played/play a sport, have you ever experienced an injury while playing?

• Yes :(

• Nope.

For most athletes, sports started as just a game in the early years of childhood and progressed into a passion. However, in recent years this shift has been occurring earlier and earlier, with over 60 million children and teens involved in at least one competitive sport in the US alone according to the CDC. However, with an increase in children in sports we also see an increase in childhood injuries.

Getting Involved in Sports

Children in Sports

• Excessive training at a young age can lead to more injuries down the road due to tiny micro traumas in ligaments, bone, muscle and ,most severely, growth plates.

• Severs disease is associated with overuse causing swelling of the growth plate in the back of the heel putting serious stress on the Achilles tendon and causing pain while walking.

Overuse Injuries and Sever's Disease

• 3.5 million children get hurt every year participating in sports

• Football, bicycling, and basketball see the most injuries of all sports putting nearly 600,000 children in the emergency room every year.

• Majority of these injuries occur because children bodies are still developing.

In a recent study by John Hopkins Medicine...

​Injuries in childhood can stick with you for life!!!

​Ligament tears are 6 times more likely in female athletes than in males (Harvard Health). Women are also more likely to face injuries to their lower extremities than men.

The statistics

The female sex hormone, estrogen, has a strong correlation to injuries during ovulation of the menstrual cycle. When estrogen is high the ligaments and tendons are thinner and not as strong. Tracking periods alone can lead to a decrease in injury rates.

Estrogen

Anatomically men and women have a lot of differences as well, with women having wider hips, a more narrow knee spaces, and an altered hip to knee alignment. Actions can be taken to help women experience less injuries because of these differences.

Anatomical Differences

​Females in Sports

As sports have progressed and evolved, protective gear has taken a back seat. While sports will always have certain risk, better protective gear can aid in bringing injury rates down. More gear can be implemented to prevent so many childhood and female injuries. Sports with the highest injury rates are those with a lot of collisions and contact, things that can be weakened with better padding and better equipment.

​

Protective Gear

​There is a stigma placed around carbohydrates that has made a lot of athletes avoid them as they are believed to make you slow. This is not true, as they are the #1 source of energy and without an ample amount of them you are 2 times more likely to experience injury.

​​Average Nutrition of an Athlete

The female athlete triad is the relationship between eating disorders, osteoporosis, and menstrual disturbance. This leads to low energy availability. There has been a serious increase in eating disorders in recent decades, with female and male athletes due to added pressures from coaches and parents as sports become more and more serious.

Female Athlete Triad

​Nutrition in Athletes

Work Cited

• Pearson, Steve. “Sports the History and Evolution.” Modern Sports History Including Culture the Beginnings and Major Events, 2021.

• Kehinde, Obasanjo. “4 Ways That Sports Has Changed over the Years.” The Culture Custodian (Est. 2014.), Culture Custodian, 13 Sept. 2021.

• Pearson, Steve. “Sports the History and Evolution.” Modern Sports History Including Culture the Beginnings and Major Events, 2021.