No One Tells You About The Banana Peels: My Very Brief Career In Surgery
It started with a banana peel.
Why The NHL Lost Control Of Its Mumps Outbreak
This is the most baffling sports medicine story of the year: Thirteen NHL players and two referees have been diagnosed with mumps—a potentially severe and exceedingly viral infection that classically causes fever, body aches, malaise, and in about half of cases, parotitis (a painful swelling of the salivary glands).…
Why Does The Flu Vaccine Suck This Year?
Did you get your flu shot? I didn't really want to (I hate needles) but as an infectious disease physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, it would be exceedingly poor form if I opted out. My job requires it, and I recommend the vaccine to just about every patient, every day. The shot doesn't actually hurt, and if…
Why Do Tennis Players Grunt? Because It Works
Monica Seles gets the blame—at 93 decibels, her screams on the court were about as loud as a motorcycle, and started the run on grunting in tennis. It was frowned upon at first, but everyone's climbed on board—Djokovic, Nadal, Sharapova, Serena, and Venus, they all get their shriek on. A generation ago, nobody…
Can You Predict If Your Kid Will Throw Left-Handed?
With the Little League World Series winding down to the final few teams, there's a question that dances across the minds of many overzealous future dads: Is there anything you can do to increase the chances your kid will be left-handed, and therefore more likely to have a shot at Williamsport?
No, Neymar Can't Come Back This World Cup. That Could Paralyze Him.
To the surprise of very many, when Neymar went down in the 86th minute against Colombia on Friday, the 22-year-old striker wasn't faking. After being kneed in the back by Colombia's Juan Zúñiga, Neymar was carried off the field and taken directly to a hospital, where doctors soon discovered that he'd suffered a…
Is Fasting For Ramadan Dangerous At The World Cup?
It's bad enough that these guys have to play in the Amazon. The weather in Brazil is so preposterously hot and humid that FIFA instituted cooling breaks so players wouldn't keel over and die during games. But what are the World Cup's Muslim players supposed to do now that Ramadan is here? The month-long religious…
Why Do NBA Big Men Break Down?
Joel Embiid, the University of Kansas seven-footer who was expected to be the first pick in tonight's NBA draft, just had two screws inserted into the navicular bone in his right foot.1 Embiid is expected to miss 4-6 months and the stress fracture—his second in three months—may cost him millions of dollars.2 Many…
The Gross Things Caused By Human Bite Wounds
I was sitting in my office yesterday, not watching the World Cup, when I came across a tweet by my friend: "It's kind of fun that the third-best player in the world is just definitely insane," it said. A moment later, I was watching Luis Suárez, Uruguay's star forward, take a bite out of Italian defender Giorgio…
Did Chewing Tobacco Kill Tony Gwynn?
On Monday, Tony Gwynn died from complications related to salivary cancer, the same disease that claimed the life of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch two years ago. When Yauch died at the hospital where I work in Manhattan, I was shaken. A whole generation got a little older that day. The thing about Yauch's illness was that…
The Scientific Case Against Vibram's FiveFinger Running Shoe
Last week's class-action settlement by Vibram, an Italian footwear manufacturer known for making silly-looking lightweight running shoes, recalls the recent case against Sketchers, a company that agreed to pay out $40 million after falsely claiming that walking in its product would give you Kim Kardashian's bootie.…
Why Is Blood Donation Still Incredibly Homophobic?
When University of Missouri defensive end Michael Sam is selected in this week's NFL draft, it will be a soft milestone—the first time that an openly gay athlete is drafted into one of the major American sports—making discrimination based on sexuality seem that much more archaic. But you might not realize that there…
Can You Predict If Your Kid Will Throw Left-Handed?
I'm at that age where my buddies from college are starting to sign their kids up for Little League. They'll differ in degree and in approach to helicopter coaching and buying up extravagant, miniaturized baseball equipment, but there's one thing they'll all agree on: They hope their kid's a lefty.
How Serious Is Tony Parker's Back Injury?
Tonight, Tony Parker will likely miss his third straight game with a back injury, and more than a few assume that Parker's "injury" is really just a cover for Gregg Popovich to rest his star before the playoffs. The injury, tweeted April 7th from the Spurs' official account as "a sprained facet joint, left side,"…
Everything You Need To Know About Getting A Vasectomy For March Madness
There's a widespread (if unverified) belief that vasectomies increase substantially during March Madness. If you're going to be stuck at home icing your testicles, the thinking goes, why not schedule it around a week you're already blowing off work for the tournament?
Just How Serious Is Joel Embiid's Injury?
The Kansas Jayhawks open up the Big 12 Tournament today against Oklahoma State, and they'll be without freshman center Joel Embiid. Embiid, who's spent much of this season somehow keeping pace with comparisons to Hakeem Olajuwon, has reportedly been diagnosed with a spinal stress fracture. The implications for NCAA…
No, Fast Tempo Isn't Endangering College Football Players
The concerns over head trauma have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers and magazines for the past five years, and have led to a host of rule changes in college football. But one proposal for a new change—called the Tempo Rule—has caught the public's attention for, well, not making very much sense.
Mark Cuban Is Fighting To Make HGH Legal In The NBA
Mark Cuban is an ideas man, and he's got a hell of an idea. In late November, Cuban announced that he had asked the NBA Board of Governors to consider letting injured players use synthetic human growth hormone (HGH) while rehabbing and that he was willing to fund the necessary clinical studies to ensure player safety…
How The Super Bowl Can Kill You
Do you care about the Super Bowl? I mean do you really care who wins or are you just watching for the commercials? If you are invested in the game, there are a few things you should know. The first is this: if your team loses, it could be bad for your health. Spectacularly bad. So bad that clinical investigators now…
What The Hell Did Peyton Manning Inject Into His Neck?
One of the more unusual sports medicine stories in recent memory involves the best quarterback on the planet, a freak injury, and a subtle bit of legalese.