Exercise Health and Pain Management
Exercise is an important way of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and preventing chronic health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and sleep apnea. Health professionals recommend having 30 minutes of moderate-level intensity exercise per day. Some activities of moderate-level intensity exercise include brisk walking, cycling, rowing, and swimming especially for those with a sedentary lifestyle such as an office job that includes sitting for long hours. According to the CDC, moderate-intensity exercise has a heart rate between 64-76% of your maximum heart rate.
However, many sports are considered to be vigorous-level intensity exercise, and unfortunately, the risk goes up with the increase in strenuous activity of the sport. Examples of vigorous-level intensity exercise include track, cross country, soccer, tennis, and basketball.
The risk is even higher for injury if the individual is out-of-shape, doesn’t wear protective equipment, doesn’t warm up prior to exercise or cool down after exercise, or participates in contact sports such as football, wrestling, martial arts, or boxing. Not to say that vigorous-intensity exercises are harmful, they actually offer great health benefits including an adrenaline rush that comes with beating your personal record. It’s just that the risk of injury is even greater and typically requires outside supervision in the form of coaches and referees to monitor the game.
Sports injuries are common to pain management, and pain management offers several treatment modalities to treat acute and chronic pain. Common overuse sports injuries include but are not limited to jumper’s knee, tennis/ golf elbow, sciatica, runner’s knee, and shin splints. You may be able to manage a minor sports injury at home with rest, ice, compression, and elevation. However, if your sports injury fails to improve within a few days of at-home care, you should schedule an appointment with our specialists at Northwest Suburban Pain Center. Some of our treatment methods that are used to treat sports injuries include epidural steroid injections, joint injections, nerve blocks, PRP therapy, radio frequency ablation, and spinal cord stimulation. Please contact our offices in Arlington Heights and South Barrington if you have any painful sports injuries or are just looking for treatment of pain from previous injuries or conditions.