May Day

CJSM: bringing you clinical sports and exercise medicine research, from around the globe

Whether you are celebrating today as International Workers’ Day, running around a May pole, or watching Leicester City try to complete the 5000:1 shot of winning the Premiership, we are sure that today, May 1, can only be a good day:  our third issue of the year has just published.  And this May Day CJSM is full of offerings we’re sure will be of  interest to you.

Two of the articles have a special focus on physical activity as an intervention for medical conditions — one is a meta-analysis from Chinese colleagues finding a protective effect for physical activity against lung cancer, and the other is a prospective, single-blinded, randomized clinical trial looking at rock climbing as an intervention in the treatment of low back pain. This study is from Austria, and had positive findings for dependent measures of disability (the Oswestry Disability Index), a physical examination maneuver, and even the extent of disc protrusion on MRI.  We’re proud to publish these high quality studies from across the globe.

We are also proud to contribute to the growing body of literature on the effectiveness of “Exercise is Medicine.”  It reminds me of the name change one of our affiliated societies just went through–our sports medicine clinical colleagues Down Under just recently renamed their college the Australasian College of Sport and Exercise Physicians, reflecting the increasing importance of physical activity research to our profession.   As someone who works both in the areas of clinical medicine and public health I couldn’t be happier with the ACSEP decision and with CJSM’s role in advancing this research.

Other highlights from this new May issue: We will soon be publishing a podcast with the lead author of another original research study, Shoe and Field Surface Risk Factors for Acute Lower r Injuries Among Female Youth Soccer Players. This is sure to contribute to the turf vs. grass debate–which surface is safer?  And on a personal note, I am delighted to see my friend and colleague Dr. Natalie Stork’s very interesting clinical case published: Pregame sore throat, postgame intensive care unit.  As a practicing clinician, I find those cases very interesting–I hope that reading them keeps me on my toes, so that I don’t miss the zebras in the herd of horses. Of note, our case studies are now published exclusively on line — and so don’t wait for your print version of CJSM to come in the mail, go click on that link right now.

And, finally, we publish in this issue the abstracts for the upcoming Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM) conference in Victoria, B.C., set to take place May 18 to 21.  CASEM — in that title, too, the marriage of ‘sport’ and ‘exercise’ medicine.

Sport to Exercise. China to Austria to Canada.  We cover all the bases, across the globe, in this May’s issue.  We hope you get a lot out of it.