CJSM Podcast with Dr. William Meehan — long-term quality-of-life benefits for collegiate female athletes

December 13, 2020 by

Dr. William Meehan (R) and yours truly (L) in that oh so 2020 virtual space

CJSM’s November 2020 issue — the last of this unprecedented calendar year — contains many many interesting research studies.

One of the studies was the subject of our most recent blog post journal club.

I enjoyed that submission so much that I thought I would ‘ring’ the authors and see if they could join me on a podcast.

Corresponding author Dr. William (Bill) Meehan kindly set aside time from his busy schedule to share his thoughts on this study: Stracciolini A, et al. Female Sport Participation Effect on Long-Term Health-Related Quality of Life,

Dr. Meehan has been a regular at CJSM — here in the blog, on a previous CJSM podcast, and most especially in the journal itself.  He is a prolific author.

He is also a friend and trusted colleague, whom I met a long time ago when he and I both completed our sports medicine fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. God bless him, he always responds to that hook of friendship when I call him and need some collegial advice!

In this new study, he and the team of authors led by Dr. Andrea Stracciolini looked at a cohort of women in their 40’s to 70’s who have previously participated as athletes in college at NCAA DIII level institutions.

In our conversation Dr. Meehan covers a wide variety of subjects:  what are DIII institutions, what is Title IX, how does college sport participation associate with long-term QOL measures, and more. 

Check out and subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes or go to the media tab on our main CJSM web page. And check out the study itself in our November 2020 issue. Any way you engage with CJSM, we’re happy to have you.

Filed under CJSM Podcasts, Elite sport, Female Athletes, General Interest, Patient Outcome Measures, Women in Sport, Youth Sport Tagged with , ,

Urine Reagent Strips for Assessing Hypohydration — Do They Work?

December 13, 2019 by 2 Comments

Hydrated or not?

Hydration status is an important issue in sports medicine.  Both ends of the spectrum — hypo and hyperhydration — increase risk for morbidity and mortality in the athlete.  As we all know, maintaining euvolemia is an important step in the prevention of heat illness, as the evaporative effect of sweating is one of the body’s mechanisms for heat dissipation.  Conversely, as my colleague and CJSM author Dr. Tamara Hew-Butler has argued on different platforms, a zeal to overhydrate can lead to hyperhydration, hyponatremia, and in extreme cases, death.

There is another way we concern ourselves with hydration status in sports medicine, and that is when assessing athletes who compete in weight classes, or when doing urine drug testing as a screen at a doping control station in competition.  Typically, such assessments are done using different testing modalities on urine specimens.

I am a Medical Delegate for the Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) and am involved in doping control at long-distance swimming events.  Urine drug screens cannot reliably be done on dilute urine specimens.  In most settings we use refractometry but in some more remote or less developed venues, we may need to use urine reagent strips [WADA has different standards of specific gravity (SG) suitable for urine testing depending on whether refractometry or urine reagent strips are used].

More commonly, here in central Ohio, is the need to assess for hypohydration in the popular sport of wrestling [wrestlers — and other athletes competing in weight classes — will frequently sweat and minimize fluid intake prior to a competitive weigh-in to ‘make weight’ in the class in which they want to compete].  In Ohio high school wrestling, urine reagent strips only are used, and the standard is any sample with SG >1.025 results in a disqualification, with a minimum time period of 48 hours before reassessment.

Having an interest in all these dimensions of testing an athlete’s hydration status, I read with great interest the Brief Report that was published in the November 2019 CJSM: Urine Reagent Strips Are Inaccurate for Assessing Hypohydration: A Brief Report. Read more of this post

Filed under General Interest Tagged with , , , , , ,

The @MomsTeam Summit in Boston #PlaySmart

September 21, 2014 by 1 Comment

photo (24)

Dr. Brian Hainline, Chief Medical Officer for the NCAA, discussing how to ensure the physical and mental health of youth athletes.

It truly was inspiring being part of a special day of talk and action that took place on Monday.  As I wrap up my work week (condensed into a few busy days after flying back home to Columbus, OH from Boston, MA) I now have the time to reflect a bit on the day.

MomsTeam Institute hosted a summit at Harvard Medical School, “SmartTeams Play Safe™: Protecting the Health & Safety of the Whole Child In Youth Sports By Implementing Best Practices,” and I was honored to be one of the speakers.

I’ve written about MomsTeam, a non-profit organization implementing best practices in youth sport safety, before; but I don’t believe I’ve ever shared with you what a strong band of clinicians and researchers comprise the group.  Monday, many of my fellow speakers formed a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of sports medicine, and to a person they gave some wonderfully memorable talks:  ranging from Doug Casa speaking broadly about the subject of heat injury prevention in youth sports  to Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s Chief Medical Officer, to Holly Silvers-Granelli who spoke about ACL prevention in female youth athletes, emphasizing neuromuscular training programs (a subject which is central to one of our CJSM podcasts), and Tracey Covassin who spoke about gender differences in concussions.

A particularly poignant moment came when Dr. Hainline had us watch the video from Designed to Move, a “Physical Activity Action Agenda.”   Read more of this post

Filed under General Interest, Psychology in Sport, Public Health in Sports and Exercise Medicine, Youth Sport Tagged with , , , , ,

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