Almost 9 million sports injuries happen each year in the United States, leaving patients of all ages bumped, bruised, and sore. Fortunately, today there are plenty of medical treatment options to help athletes of all levels get back to the activities they love and even prevent future injuries.
At Orange Orthopaedic Associates, board-certified and fellowship-trained orthopedic specialist James M. Lee Jr, MD, helps our patients prevent sports injuries using a variety of sports medicine treatment options, including exercise medicine.
Here’s how this cutting-edge treatment could help you.
When you hear the word “prescription” from your doctor, you probably think about the kind of prescription you take to your local pharmacist. But in recent years, sports medicine specialists and other medical providers have begun to prescribe exercise as part of their treatment protocols.
Within the past year, the American Heart Association published a recommendation for what plenty of doctors already knew: Exercise more to decrease high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels that can lead to heart attacks, heart disease, and strokes.
Not only does exercise help you shed unwanted pounds that put strain on your joints, heart, and other organs, but it also improves circulation and decreases inflammation. And it keeps you mobile and flexible as you get older.
Exercise medicine plays a big role in sports medicine, too. Dr. Lee uses exercise medicine in both sports injury rehabilitation and in custom programs aimed at helping athletes perform at their best.
In rehabilitation, exercise as part of a physical therapy program improves natural healing responses, enabling athletes to recover more quickly.
Dr. Lee focuses on gentle, targeted exercises that can help strengthen and build up damaged muscle tissue and connective tissues like ligaments and tendons, supporting your body’s ability to repair and regenerate tissue.
Beyond rehabilitation, Dr. Lee uses exercise medicine to help athletes enhance overall physical fitness along with exercises designed for their specific sport.
These exercises go beyond the typical warmup stretches to focus on the muscles, joints, and other components involved in your particular activity. By strengthening your body for your sport, exercise medicine can help you perform better and even avoid injuries in the future.
As a leading sports medicine specialist in northern New Jersey, Dr. Lee focuses on providing customized, patient-centered care to every patient. By tailoring his exercise “prescriptions” for the individual athlete and sport, he helps women and men of all athletic levels stay healthy and active.
To learn more about exercise medicine and other custom therapies at Orange Orthopaedic Associates, contact us at either our West Orange or Bayonne, New Jersey, location today.
