Physician Profile: Nick MonsonDr. Nick Monson talks about his medical philosophy and what makes his practice unique.
From Interactive Marketing & Web
| 71
71 plays
| 0
|
|
Listener Question: Should My Child Be Cross-training for Different Sports?When your child gets serious about becoming competitive in a sport, it may be tempting to dedicate all their time and energy to that one sport. However, recent research points towards the importance…
From Interactive Marketing & Web
| 16
16 plays
| 0
March 08, 2017
Kids Health
Sports Medicine Announcer: Need reliable health and wellness information? Don't listen to the guy in the cube next to you. Get it from a trusted source, straight from the doctor's mouth. Here's this week listener question on The Scope. Interviewer: All right, this listener question is about youth specializing in a particular sport. This is from a parent who is wondering. They said that their kid just loves football and that's what they want to specialize in. So they want to do everything, the football camps, playing football. This parent doesn't think that that's necessarily a good idea and wants to know if that is the case. We've got an expert here to tell us. Nick Monson is a sports medicine expert here at University of Utah Health Care. Dr. Monson, what about this notion of kids specializing in just one sport, playing just one thing? Dr. Monson: Yeah, we're getting just mounds of data on this issue. We're watching a lot of burnout in the younger athlete not only mentally but also physically. We have good evidence to show that we need to give a patient rest from a particular activity. Often for a baseball player I like to see three months where they're not out there throwing. That also means three months where they're not out there trying to be a quarterback because that's going to be the same type of motion that's going to cause that same wear and tear to their elbow or to their shoulder. So doing a lot of different activities is what we were meant to do. It's how kids maintain that happiness and it's how they actually develop skills that they can translate into their sport of preference in the future as well. A baseball player should be able to enjoy swimming, or they should be able to enjoy playing basketball or picking up another outlet where they can maintain their health and their activity level but not causing the same overuse of their body. Interviewer: Because it seems to me that the kind of common thought might be well if I want to get really great at this sport I need to really practice this sport. But, what you're saying is especially in kids if they do that they could actually hurt themselves. Dr. Monson: Yeah, undoubtedly. Interviewer: More so than an adult could? Dr. Monson: Yeah. Well, you know, I think part of the problem is as a kid you're so heavily influenced by your parents' desires for what they want you to do. You're influenced by what you want to do at that age as well. But, you don't always have the best intuition as to what you're feeling or as to what is healthy or safe for you. So the parents play a very big role in that situation of helping mold their kids into the athlete that they want to be and that they foresee their child being as well. You know, no doubt every parent thinks their kid is going to play in the NFL, and some of those kids actually do. They just have to make sure that when they're training and practicing and growing their abilities that they're doing that in a safe manner, which we know is done by not just one sport but in multiple activities. Announcer: Have a question? Ask it. Send your listener question to hello@thescoperadio.com. |
|
Physician Profile: Darrel BrodkeDr. Darrel Brodke talks about his medical philosophy and what makes his practice unique.
From Interactive Marketing & Web
| 15
15 plays
| 0
|
|
New Tendon Injury TreatmentsChronic tendon injuries affecting shoulders, elbows and knees have long been hard to treat. But, beyond rest, stretching and icing, physicians have developed new treatment techniques in recent years,…
From Interactive Marketing & Web
| 215
215 plays
| 0
January 24, 2017
Bone Health
Sports Medicine Dr. Miller: Rest, ice, and stretching are not the only ways to repair tendon injuries. We're going to talk about some of the new treatments next on Scope Radio. Announcer: Access to our experts with in-depth information about the biggest health issues facing you today. The Specialists with Dr. Tom Miller is on The Scope. Dr. Miller: Hi, I'm Dr. Tom Miller and I'm here with Nick Monson. He's a physician here at the University of Utah in the Department of Orthopedics. He's a non-operative physician and he specializes in sports medicine. Nick, what's the story? I understand there are some new treatments out there to help with folks who have tendon injuries that have become chronic. Dr. Monson: Well, one of the things that we've been really looking at over the last decade or two is the usage of ultrasound and the ability to find issues within tendons or joints or different areas of the body by an in-office imaging modality which is ultrasound, kind of like looking at babies. But now, rather than just looking at babies, you can actually look in and see a tendon. Then, what you can do is you find that area of pathology or the area of irritation within a tendon. You can actually see it with the ultrasound, which makes it much easier for us to actually find approaches to attack that area of issue in patients. The areas develop typically from overuse. It also happens because tendons just notoriously don't have a great blood supply to them, and blood is what brings the healing factors to our body. So when you don't have that healing component coming to the tendon, it has a hard time healing. That's the way that we've addressed it. Dr. Miller: So how do you use the ultrasound to guide treatment? And what are these treatments that you're using now? Dr. Monson: Yeah. So one option is something called PRP, platelet-rich plasma. There's also another treatment option which is in the same family, which is called stem-cell therapy. These are both areas of a lot of excitement. The research on them is still forthcoming. In the orthopedic usage of it, or in the tendon issues, we've seen that it does seem to provide benefit for patients. It's a discussion I have with them. It's not always the perfect option. But for a lot of patients, it's something that we can offer where, ultimately, it involves a blood draw. We take the blood off of a patient. We spin that blood down. We take the healing components of that blood and actually reinject that into the tendon under visualization of ultrasound so we can find that area that looks like it's irritated or has the issue. We directly inject into that area using that PRP injecdate that we've harvested from the patient by a blood draw. Then we can stimulate regrowth of the tendon as the theoretical purpose of it. But often, what it seems to do is cause the inflammatory reaction in the area, or it just kind of stimulates the healing in the area, and has provided a lot of relief for our patients. Dr. Miller: Which tendons do you usually look at when you consider this therapy, or which tendons do you most frequently treat? Dr. Monson: It can be done on any tendon that there is noted pathology in. So if you see an area of issue, it can be done in just about any tendon. Tendons that we typically think of, of having frequent issues are the shoulder, so the rotator cuff. We think about tennis elbow, so that's on the outside of the elbow. Golfer's elbows, on the inside of the elbow. We'll do it there. We see it in knees, particularly for people that have something called jumper's knee which is at the tendon of the knee. Achilles' tendon. Even in like the plantar fascia, this can be done. Dr. Miller: These tendon injuries, they're not short-term injuries. Would these be folks that have chronic problems with the tendons that would be over weeks or months, perhaps? Dr. Monson: Certainly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's usually, somebody will come to see me. They have a new injury, we'll work them through the things that we have the best evidence for, what we know works. Things like rest, avoiding aggravating activities, pain modification, medications. Then also, eccentric exercises are very important. We have good research showing that those are helpful. Dr. Miller: What are eccentric exercises? Dr. Monson: Yeah, so those are the exercises where the muscle is fired but it's actually lengthening at the same time. So we're lengthening a tendon and muscle unit while there is force. Dr. Miller: Well, for stretching. Dr. Monson: Yes, correct. Dr. Miller: Okay. So how do you use the ultrasound to guide your therapy? Dr. Monson: So the ultrasound, first of all, identifies the lesion. So then I know exactly where I need to go. The second thing you can do is the ultrasound will actually, if I place a needle into a patient, I can follow the course of the needle the entire time. I can see the surrounding nerves. I can see the surrounding blood vessels and I know exactly where I'm at. First of all, it's very effective for safety or avoiding those structures that we don't want to hit. But second of all, it helps us target very directly where we want to be within a tendon and make sure that we're in the correct spot. Dr. Miller: Now, I'm assuming before you enter, you have a patient undergo this type of treatment, you have gone through the standard therapy. So they've gone through a physical therapy. They've done the stretching. They've done the icing, and they're just not getting results. Dr. Monson: Correct. There's one other procedure that we've added to this as well. It's a needle procedure as well. So that means that it's not done in an operating room, but it is done in a procedure room where we, again, identify that area of concern. We're able to use a specialized needle tip that it pulsates at the very tip of it very quickly, about 17,000 times per second. Dr. Miller: That's fast. Dr. Monson: We're talking about a millimeter of movement. Yeah, it's fast. It's not a lot of movement. It's enough that it actually, you think of it as kind of pulverizing the tissue in there. It's emulsifying the tissue is the term that we use. It's the same technology that cataract doctors, or eye doctors, use to remove cataracts out of patients. It breaks up the tissue, removes it from the body, and then leaves the healthy tissue around it. This is a newer treatment, probably in about the last five years that this one's been out. For the same tendon issues that we just talked about, this is another treatment option for patients that's been very promising so far. Announcer: Thescoperadio.com is University of Utah Health Sciences Radio. If you like what you heard, be sure to get our latest content by following us on Facebook. Just click on the Facebook icon at thescoperadio.com. |
|
Listener Question: What Exercises Are Best to Balance with Running?Too much of one exercise, like running, can be unhealthy. That's why sports medicine physician Dr. Nick Monson says runners should do other exercises in addition to running, like biking,…
From Interactive Marketing & Web
| 23
23 plays
| 0
January 11, 2017
Sports Medicine Announcer: Need reliable health and wellness information? Don't listen to the guy in the cube next to you. Get it from a trusted source, straight from the doctor's mouth. Here is this week's listener question on, "The Scope." Interviewer: All right. Today's listener question comes from somebody who says that they are a runner and they want to know what exercise they should do to balance out their running. They're concerned that they might end up with some sort of a muscle imbalance injury because they run a lot. We've got our expert here. He's a sports medicine expert. His name is Dr. Nick Monson. Is this a common problem, and what should this individual do to balance their running? Dr. Monson: It is. It's a very common problem. I work a lot with runners. We noticed that runners, number one, most of them are crazy in one way or another, which is why they run. I can say that from personal experience, being a runner. I know that what running does to me is very important and I love it. But at the same time, you have to recognize that too much of one thing ends up wearing and tearing down the body in one way or another. So being prepared for what you're going to do activity-wise, making sure that you're not just focusing on having huge quads and the ability to run for long distances. Yes, that's important, but the more important part of this, really, is balancing and doing other exercises along with it, in preparation for those runs. So I don't tell runners that they shouldn't run. I tell runners that they should be doing other things in addition to their running. Biking, swimming. People that end up doing triathlons along with marathons or other things end up having a lot better strength throughout their body. Their core strength, meaning the muscles around the abdomen and lower back. They get stronger and we see fewer injuries as that occurs. The hip muscles, those are highly important to a good running technique and we start to notice that those improve as people vary what they're doing for exercise, as well. Rest in between activities that they're doing is also very important to allow a muscle group to recover and then strengthen up. Interviewer: Are there any particular exercises in particular that are better than others? Like, I've often heard running and you should balance it maybe with the stationary bike or cycling. That's a good yin to the yang. Dr. Monson: Yeah. Yeah. I do. I think that it's tough to beat what you get out of swimming. That is highly beneficial for people. I think biking adds an excellent component to it. Actually, being in the gym and working on actual muscle groups two to three times a week is an excellent idea because then you can actually focus on the muscles that you're not able to specifically address by doing the biking, by doing the running. And a lot of those have to do with the core and they have to do with the hip muscles and those can be addressed the old, dirty way, laying on a mat and getting down and sweaty. Interviewer: Do you find that people that tend to do these balancing exercises tend to be injured less? Dr. Monson: I don't know, I never see them. I guess so, right? Interviewer: In theory, right? Dr. Monson: Yeah. Yeah. Interviewer: So you would highly recommend that perhaps somebody . . . Dr. Monson: I would, yes. Interviewer: Fair enough. And how much of the thing that I don't like to necessarily do, like riding my bike if I'm a runner, do I need to do to get that balance? Dr. Monson: I think if you gave yourself a good . . . the typical teaching. I mean, if I was to have just the perfect patient, which runners never are. You should recognize that first, they're just never the perfect patient. But if they were, they'd probably give themselves a 48-hour rest between runs and have an opportunity to allow those muscle groups to recover. And in between, you're still working out other muscle groups. And it doesn't mean that you can only run three or four times a week, or do exercise three or four times a week. It means that you're limiting what you're doing, as far as one repetitive motion, to three or four times per week. Announcer: Thescoperadio.com is University of Utah Health Sciences Radio. If you like what you heard, be sure to get our latest content by following us on Facebook. Just click on the Facebook icon at thescoperadio.com |