Ramadan and the World Cup

June 28, 2014 by

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins today and will affect athletes and sporting fans around the globe until the fast is broken with the feast of Eid al-Fitr on July 28.

The World Cup may be like a religion, and is currently affecting the lives of many…..but throughout the next month Ramadan will have possibly the bigger impact on over a billion people on the planet.

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Hassan Yabda, one of the players on the Algerian national team.

How, for instance, will the fast affect Algerian athletes who play their World Cup knock out match against Germany in two days?  How will it affect, for that matter, the millions of the faithful, Algerian fans who will be watching?

We revisit a blog post from last year, and an excellent study published in our pages on this very issue:  Does Ramadan Affect the Risk of Injury in Professional Football?

How topical:  The World Cup, the very pinnacle of professional soccer–it’s happening!  Ramadan–it has begun!

Good luck to the teams playing in the knock-out stages of the World Cup, and Ramadan Mubarak!

sportingjim's avatarClinical Journal of Sport Medicine Blog

Crescent_Moon_(2558144570) The Crescent Moon rising at sunset, marking the start of the month of Ramadan

The month of Ramadan begins tomorrow, July 9, and lasts until August 7.  As many of this blog’s readers will know, observant Muslims will fast from dawn until sunset:  no food, no liquids…..no sports drinks or power bars.  The questions of ‘carb loading’ or ‘gluten free’, (‘should i drink some chocolate milk after my workout?‘) can all be put on the table until the evening.  The diet is one of pure abstinence, morning until night.

Muslim athletes are not unique in observing a fast: Catholic Christians will consume much less than usual if observing the prescribed tenets of Lent on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and Jewish athletes will go a full 25 hours consuming nothing on Yom Kippur:  friends have told me they will be loath to brush their teeth or even shower, lest…

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Sideline assessment of concussion and return to play – are we practising what we preach?

June 23, 2014 by 2 Comments

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A different shaped ball, a different World Cup….. Similar challenges

The more things change the more they stay the same…..this post by CJSM Executive Editor Chris Hughes was written in 2011 about the RUGBY World Cup incident involving a guy named Parra. Could have been written about the recent brouhaha over the 2014 FOOTBALL World Cup incident involving the guy named Pereira. In both cases, a player was inappropriately put back on to the field.

Be sure to take a look as well at the Zurich Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport, found in the CJSM.  The section on the sideline evaluation of the player suspected of having a concussion is especially well written.

Chris Hughes's avatarClinical Journal of Sport Medicine Blog

The seventh Rugby Union World Cup competition ended last saturday in a tense final between strong favourites, the famous New Zealand All Blacks, and France, the former holding out for a one-point win 8-7 over Les Bleues.

The game featured a number of injuries, but one caused more of a stir than most – the injury to the French number 10 Morgan Parra.

Parra took what appeared to be an accidental blow to the side of his head from the knee of All Blacks’ Captain Richie McCaw in a ruck, and appeared to be visibly concussed, looking shaky on getting up after receiving lengthy on-field medical attention. The incident can be seen in this video.

He was taken from the field of play and replaced by Trinh-Duc. Surprisingly, however, he re-appeared on the field after around 5 minutes and continued to play on for another 5 minutes until he experienced another…

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What’s a World Cup without controversy?

June 22, 2014 by 2 Comments

Uruguay 4 - Chile 0

Uruguay’s Alvaro Pereira

Followers of this blog will know I have just returned from Quebec City, where I spent a fabulous four days catching up with professional colleagues from around the world at the 2014 FIMS sports medicine conference.  The event was hosted by the Canadian Academy of Sports and Exercise Medicine (CASEM), who conjointly held their annual meeting with FIMS.

Followers of the vastly bigger event known as the World Cup will know during this same period, there was the medical (mis)decision seen around the world involving Uruguay’s Alvaro Pereira:  knocked unconscious, and subsequently allowed to return to the pitch.

In truth, I got to see the event live, along with hundreds of millions of other people on the planet.  On a break in between conference sessions, I was in my hotel room. I had the television on while working on the laptop, when I noticed the downed Pereira.  My initial glimpse of his limp body was first out of context, which is to say I didn’t see the hit live, and I had yet to see the replay; my initial reaction was to fear the worst, as Pereira’s entirely limp body had me concerned he had suffered a cardiac event.

Quickly, though, I got to see the replay–the knee to the head–and it all made sense to me.

What followed, in some ways, made no sense.

Like the others in the viewing universe, I saw Pereira attended to by his medical staff.   As he got to the sideline he started to vigorously protest the intended substitution; and, of course as you all know, Pereira eventually made his way back to the pitch……

And at that moment I saw the twitter universe explode.

At the very least, the 2012 Zurich Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport was being honored in the breach rather than the observance.

Just a smattering of the tweets: Read more of this post

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#FIMS2014 c’est tres bon!

June 20, 2014 by 1 Comment

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CASEM Members Gordon Matheson and Margo Mountjoy, and CJSM Exec. Editor Chris Hughes   (Left  to Right)

Can it be Friday already?

My how the time has passed.

There is one more day of the combined CASEM/FIMS conference in Quebec City, and it has already declared itself a resounding success. I’ve been going to session after session that is giving me plenty to think about; connecting with colleagues old and new; and enjoying a bit of the beauty–both physical and culinary–that the city has to offer.  Sleep is most definitely to be put on the back burner.

The journal had its annual editorial board meeting timed to coincide with the CASEM meeting this year, and it was both fun and productive to work out with the board the direction we will take CJSM as we move forward.  There are many new possibilities in the works, and we will be sure to share any of the journal’s emerging features on this and other of our social media channels.

As for the educational sessions, I was greatly taken by a shoulder presentation I heard Bob McCormack give on evidence-based approaches to common clinical scenarios, ranging from Grade III AC joint separations (don’t do surgery) to mid-shaft clavicular fractures (do it) to surgical repair of first time dislocators if highly active (again, do it).  Likewise, there was a wonderful session on trying to put into practice the ‘exercise prescription’ in chronic disease; there was so much energy in a session that included folks like Gordon Matheson and Pierre Fremont, the current president of CASEM.  A keynote speech about the evolution of anti-doping measures, given by Dr. Andrew Pipe, was especially illuminating

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Dr. Hamish Osborne, CJSM Associate Editor, demonstrates his work on hip abduction strength

The poster sessions were also great fun.  While I was discussing some of the work I am doing on simple reaction time in concussion, I noticed my colleague and fellow CJSM Associate Editor Hamish Osborne really getting into his poster work. Hamish wins two awards I think: one for most interactive poster demo, and two for coming the farthest for this conference (he hails from Dunedin, New Zealand).

One more day to go, and it looks like there are a slate of great sessions for Saturday to go with what has come before.  Too soon, I’ll be boarding the plane home.

Au revoir Quebec City, it has been a great, great time.

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