Helpful Dietary Aids

Over the winter, I was introduced to a website that I thought might be a nice experiment to try before I recommend it to athletes or others who are worried about their weight.  The site, www.myfitnesspal.com, is a calorie counter that has a few nice features built into it.  The most important of these is the fact that the site designers have seen the power of mobile platforms and have designed apps that for several different operating systems that tie in to their database.  It is now possible to get real time information about the number of calories you are consuming while you are sitting at the dinner table.  The user does not have to write it down now and copy it later.

Because it is a calculator, it does all of the number crunching for the user.  It has already been programmed with a wide variety of foods from restaurants and from the grocery store.  Best of all, you can scan bar codes to quickly look up exactly what it is that you are eating using your smartphone's camera.  Assuming that the product is in the website's database, it will fill in all the nutritional information for you.

There are other options for creating and saving some of your homemade meals.  The caloric count and and other nutritional information can also be added to the site for each of these meals.  To date, I have only added a few meals to it, but I certainly plan on adding more.

Overall, it is a website that I have had great success with in modifying my diet.  I was amazed at how many of little snacks (especially the beverages) added up so quickly.  I look forward to recommending the site to student athletes who are looking to track their diet and lose or gain weight.  I also look forward to continuing to improve my own health using the site.  By the way, did I mention that the website was free?

Ohio YMCA gets TBI wrong

In Ohio, we are one of the last states to pass legislation protecting the young athlete from the abuses that can occur from negligent or ignorant coaches in regards to managing TBIs.  It makes no difference if the coach is a high school varsity coach or the volunteer parent in a recreational league, the injury does not discern the difference.  In fact, much of the current data is showing that the younger an athlete is, the higher the risk is of chronic issues.  The legislature needs to stand firm in this fight and continue to push this bill forward.  The stance that the Ohio YMCA has taken again the provision that an athlete must be removed from competition for showing signs of a TBI is standard practice in most other states that have already passed similar legislation.  This argument needs to be disregarded as it is laughable.  If the requirement about removing the injured athlete is removed from the bill, then there is NO recourse against a coach that chooses to not follow the law.  Unfortunately, I have seen this exact level of irresponsibility in youth football in this past season.  A coach was ready to lynch an official for trying to remove an athlete during "a big game" despite the symptoms that the young man was exhibiting.  Yes YMCA, it does still happen because their are volunteer parents out there that still don't get it.

Mighty Mite Athletics

For much of the history of athletics with kids younger than high school, it has been widely believed that the impacts in contact sports such as football and hockey are not as great as they are in high school, collegiate and adult athletics.  This theory has come from the simple belief that because speeds are slower, the mass is smaller, and therefore, the accelerations are less.  What this theory has not taken into account very often is the lack of skill and experience in the sport that often allows older athletes to brace against and withstand these greater collisions.

Recently, a Virginia Tech research project looked at the forces in youth football by placing accelerometers in the helmets of various players of a local league.  What they found was shocking.  Stone Phillips of Dateline NBC fame, has recently published on his blog, StonePhillipsReports.com, a short video on the findings of this Va Tech research.  This video is worth the time for all coaches and parents of youth athletes in contact sports.

 

Picture taken from Head Impact Exposure in Youth Football by Ray W. Daniel, Steven Rowson, and Stefan M. Duma

The report reveals that children were suffering comparable g forces to those experienced by older populations in football.  The most disappointing part of this study was that the highest g forces were being experienced during practices, not games.  What makes this finding particularly disturbing was that coaches have a much greater degree of control over what happens during practices than they do over the action in games.  The harder hits should never be occurring during practices.

This research is too important to ignore.  To help get this publicized more, PBS Newshour gave the report air time and conducted an online chat with viewers that included Stone Phillips.  There is also a brief follow-up interview that is located on the same page that summarizes the same arguments of inexperience and lack of skill and strength that affect the young athletes.  The Concussion Blog, by Dustin Fink, also identified the PBS report to increase its publicity.

It is my hope that more research will be performed with children of these younger ages and that it will also include more sports than just football.  If our youngest children are indeed being consistently exposed to these high g forces while playing at their age, then we should reconsider how we teach the game to them.