CHRISTUS Health urges athletes to prepare for heat and injury risks ahead of fall season

As preseason practice gets underway for fall student-athletes across East Texas, CHRISTUS Health is urging parents and participants to be prepared so they can enjoy a long, healthy season.

The heat plays a factor in most outdoor activities this time of year, and it’s a key focus for athletes and medical professionals.

“External heat stroke is the second leading cause of sudden death in athletes,” said Casey Reed, sports medicine coordinator CHRISTUS Good Shepherd Health System. “Over the past 30 years nationally, we haven’t seen a significant decline in incidents.”

While football tends to be in the news most frequently, Reed said the risk of heat-related illnesses or injuries applies to all summer and fall activities.

“It is important to note band often practices during the same time of the day and year on hot surfaces such as black, hot parking lots,” she said. “Cross country athletes are running several miles in extreme temperatures, and little league baseball and softball teams are playing all day tournaments as well.”

Traditional symptoms of heat illness:

• Heat exhaustion: faint/dizzy, excessive sweating, cool/pale/clammy skin, nausea or vomiting, rapid/weak pulse, muscle cramps; If not treated can lead to heat stroke.
• Heat stroke: decrease in mental/neurological function, may lose consciousness, throbbing headache or confusion, no sweating, body temp above 103 degrees, red/hot/dry skin, nausea or vomiting, rapid, strong pulse.

Dr. Trevor Wait, orthopedic surgeon at CHRISTUS Trinity Clinic, emphasized the importance of cardiovascular conditioning after an extended break from physical activity.

“There's definitely a component of getting your respiratory conditioning back into shape,” Wait said. “Just improving oxygen blood flow to your muscles and ultimately being able to compete at a high level again is important.”

Wait said proper stretching both before and after practice can help reduce the risk of muscular injuries.

“It’s common for young athletes to not stretch or warm up well,” he said. “They just go out there cold and push themselves right out of the gate, which raises the risk for injury.”

Minor injuries because of poor conditioning are common during the preseason, and it can be easy to put off proper treatment, Wait said, while emphasizing that proper management of minor injuries can help to ensure a long, healthy season.

“Is a hamstring strain going to be something that they deal with 50 years from now? Not necessarily,” Wait said. “But, if it's bad enough, they risk re-injuring it if it's not managed properly.”

Both Reed and Wait encourage anyone participating in extracurricular activities to take the final weeks and days to acclimate their bodies to the upcoming seasons, especially since most common injuries happen early in the season.

“Sprains, strains and general soreness are going to be at their peak early in the season,” Reed said. “Using the time now to prepare your body can help to mitigate those injuries.”