A stitch in time

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Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar is going to miss the Bangladesh series due to a persistent groin injury. Professional sportspersons like Tendulkar often miss important games and sporting events due to injuries, but they aren't the only ones.

In America, it is estimated that 10 million people are treated for sports injuries every year. With the start of the summer holidays in India, there are many of us who take to sports without having prepared the body for it.

It is believed that the most common sports injuries are stress fractures of the foot, shin splints, tendinitis, runner's knee, hamstring injuries, tennis elbow, head and foot injuries, apart from sprains and pulled muscles.

The reasons that experts attribute sports injuries to often include improper training methods, not warming up the muscles before starting any sporting activity, not stopping when there is pain and not resting an injured muscle properly. Other reasons for sports injuries could be structural abnormalities like uneven length of the sportsperson's legs and so on.

The best way to prevent sports injuries is, of course, a proper warm-up. This has to be followed through with a cooling-down period for the body after exercise as well. In case of sports injuries there is a protocol to be followed: the injury should be rested immediately. Ice when applied to the injury helps limit internal damage and possible internal bleeding.

Compression and then elevation (where the injured body part is raised higher than the heart) will all help in limiting the damage. A word of caution, though: too much ice on the injury can be damaging, so be careful to keep the ice on for a short period of time only.

Using corticosteroids to relieve pain is not recommended as this may lead to the belief that the injury has healed and that can lead to lasting damage. One final word of advice: rest the injury completely and only then return to the sporting activity. After all, a stitch in time saves nine...