ATHLETIC INJURIES COMMON TO BOOMERS
Coined by Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon in Philadelphia, boomeritis refers to the wide range of athletic injuries that occur when aging bodies exercise too much - or too little.
In Southern California, where sun, sand and surf are king and warm weather allows for year-round activity, baby boomers can be especially susceptible to age-related athletic injury. Between 2000 and 2005, for example, the emergency room at Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance saw a 75 percent increase in orthopedic injuries among that population group. In 2000, the hospital saw 735 orthopedic patients in the baby-boomer age range. By 2005, that number had risen to 1,279. Part of the increase is due to a 2002 emergency-room expansion, but it also points to the spread of boomeritis. "We've seen an upward trend in the number of orthopedic injuries in [boomers]," said Dr. Kent Shoji, co-director of the emergency room at Little Company of Mary. "In California, people are more health conscious and have a lot more opportunity to be outdoorsy and physically active.
"There are two sides of this," he said. "People who are physically active are less prone to get injured, because they're healthier and more in shape. Then there are the weekend warriors who do nothing all week long and then go out and play sports hard on the weekend. Those are the ones who tend to get hurt more."
Jon Covey, 60, can relate to overdoing it. A former smoker, Covey didn't exercise much until he began to feel the stiffness of age coming on in his mid-50s. After a work-related injury, a doctor told him to start exercising. "I saw Jack LaLanne, 92 years old and fit as a fiddle jumping up and down, a girl on either side, as lively as he could be, and I figured if I did this right I could be just like that," Covey said. "I thought I should be doing more and more, because I figured I needed it all around, but I just ended up developing a lot of new injuries."
Despite suffering tendinitis in his shoulder, biceps and forearms, and other athletic injuries, Covey is undaunted. "When you're older, it's better to start on a slower track," he said. "I've backed off and am doing milder exercises until everything catches up and straightens out again. You have to find a good balance between not enough exercise and some. "It's also important to pay attention to physical limitations as the body ages.
"Guys try to force manliness despite what their bodies tell them," Shoji said. "You want to be like you were in high school or college. I'm sure there's some part of the brain that remembers competitiveness and knows what [their bodies] could do before. But that was when they were conditioned and 20 years younger."
Dan Mounce, 53, played tennis several times a week for most of his adult life, until the pain of chronic tennis elbow finally forced him from the game.
"When it started hurting, I should have stopped playing," he said. "But I didn't, and now I haven't been able to play for more than a year. I'm still working out at the gym, and I'm hoping with rest I can get better and play (tennis) again." Jille Dorler, a physical therapist at Coast Physical Therapy and Hand Clinic in Redondo Beach, Calif., said Mounce's elbow problem is not unusual among the patients she sees. "We've seen the popularity of tennis increase among baby boomers, which brings in a lot of tennis elbow and knee problems," she said. "And while repetitive motion is definitely a factor, new technology also seems to be contributing. Tennis racquets are a lot lighter today than they were in the past, and so people are hitting the ball a lot harder than they used to. "Dorler said she also has seen an increase among boomers who experience shoulder and lower back pain from the rigors of volleyball.
Tennis and volleyball also keep Shoji's emergency room busy with baby boomers who have suffered strained calves, ruptured Achilles tendons, knee problems and ligament strains. But volleyball and tennis aren't the leading cause of sports injury among baby boomers.
Shoji stresses that for all the concern around boomeritis, some exercise is definitely better than none. "The take-home story is to stretch and exercise," he said. "People who stretch tend to have less injuries, and people have to remember that over time there are changes - ligaments become less stretchy, muscles and tendons are tighter than before, bones aren't as strong. You can still be physical and good at sports, but you have to remember that time conquers all."
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