Sport is great for socialising, learning the limits of your body and staying healthy. It can be an opportunity to get free education through sport bursaries and even a way of earning a living.
Just like sport is good for you in certain aspects, it can also come at a price. The price of traumatic injury or joint/tendon wear and tear.
In my practise, I am engulphed with joint and tendon injuries from sport. These injuries are normally from overuse wear and tear or sudden forced trauma. Ligament tears, tendonitis, calcific tendons, cartilage tears and rheumatoid arthritis keep sport medicine professionals busy and are injuries that take forever to heal.
I have always envisioned our body as being a vehicle. We service our vehicles, check our wheel alignments, change the tyres, do oil changes, and refuel regularly.
For sportsmen and woman, I see Physiotherapy and rehabilitation as ‘servicing’ your body by treating your broken parts, correcting alignments and muscle imbalances, and repairing it through corrective exercise prescription.
And I see changing your oil and refueling your body, by what you put into it to help lubricate the joints and make them move smoothly. Collagen supplementation could be a ‘type of lubricator’ for your body. I would also add products like Glucosamine, Chondroitin and MSM into the mix.
Your bodies collagen provides the elasticity and regeneration of connective tissues like tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. In a supplement form, Collagen could be used as a nutritional intervention in conjunction with Physiotherapy for tendon and ligament problems, joint pain and inflammation and specific symptoms of arthritis. This could help athletes to get back to sport sooner after injury and to their former performance level.
Specific collagen peptides have been optimized to support bone and joint health by regulating the degenerative processes that affect joints. It supplies the body with the basic components needed for a strong and stable joint structure, which is an important protective component for athletes during increased joint loading in sport.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) highlighted the health benefits of collagen in sports nutrition and proposes that collagen peptides may increase the production of collagen, decrease joint discomfort, and have the potential to assist with training capacity, recovery, muscle soreness and injury management.
Look after your body externally and internally and you will be able to put many good miles on it. Remember, you can’t trade your body in for the latest model with no mileage.
Food for thought: Sportsmen and women clock many miles on their bodies and normally look great now…all ripped and toned. But, if you bought a Ferrari today and got told you must drive it for 90 years, how would you look after it?
For proper dosages of using these supplements, please consult a Dietician or use as indicated by the manufacturer.
REFERENCES
Clark, K.L., Sebastianelli,W., Flechsenhar, K.R., Aukermann, D.F., Meza, F., Millard, R.L., Deitch, J.R., Sherbondy, P.S., and Albert A. (2008). 24-Week Study on the Use of Collagen Hydrolysate as a Dietary Supplement in Athletes with Activity-Related Joint Pain. Curr. Med. Res. Opin. 24(5), 1485-96. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18416885
Moskowitz, R.W. (2000). Role of Collagen Hydrolysate in Bone and Joint Disease. Semin. Arthritis Rheum. 30(2), 87-99. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11071580
- Clifford, et al., “The Effects of Collagen Peptides on Muscle Damage, Inflammation and Bone Metabolism Following Exercise: A Randomized, Controlled Trial,” submitted for publication (2018).
R.J. Maughan, et al., “IOC Consensus Statement: Dietary Supplements and The High-Performance Athlete,” Int. J. Sport Nutr. Exerc. Metab. 28(2), 104–125 (2018).
By Guest Blogger Brent Grimsley
HG Physio clinical Director and Sports Physio, Brent Grimsley currently works as Chief Physiotherapist at Prime Human Performance institute at Moses Mabidha stadium in Durban where he looks after Elite High-Performance athletes and various professional teams in multiple sporting codes.
With almost 20 years of experience in working with athletes from pros to weekend warriors and sporty children, he has developed a passion for teaching other medical professionals in injury management of muscle strains, ligament tears, taping and rehab prescription.
You can find out more about Brent and what he does here www.hgphysio.co.za or follow him on @hgphysio
