A sports medicine therapist is someone who uses their knowledge of medicine and physical therapy to help athletes at different stages in their careers to optimize performance as well as to heal and prevent injuries. Dr. Douglas J. Abeles is an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine and treats patients in the practice of sports medicine along with his team of associates. But how do you know what actually warrants a visit to someone with this kind of specified expertise?
First, let’s get one truth out of the way. Sports medicine therapists treat athletes of all ages, genders, and areas of focus. A teenage girl playing high school softball may be just as in need of help from a sports therapist as a professional male basketball player. The important thing to remember about sports therapy is that it is specifically focused on helping athletes enhance their performance and protect their bodies from injury or further injury during gameplay. This applies to everyone who has a love for any sport, hands down.
According to the Society of Sports Therapists, a health care professional with this area of focus must be able to offer patients help with a variety of sports-related issues. These include prevention, evaluation, management, treatment, education, and rehabilitation. As such, Dr. Abeles and other health care professionals like him run the gamut of knowledge when it comes to sports medicine, and their job is to impart that wisdom as well as to make assessments and to provide treatment where applicable.
Many people think sports therapy is only about healing injuries and giving therapeutic massages. On the contrary, this specialty requires a wide range of knowledge from nutrition facts that will allow a person to perform at their best to the science of exercise that requires an understanding of how certain physical activities affect the entire body.
Certain questions may be easy for your general practitioner or even your coach to answer. However, if you have specific questions about how participating in a sport is affecting your personal wellbeing, it could be beneficial for you to visit a sports medicine therapist. It could also help you to visit someone in this specialty if you want to increase your performance or discuss injury prevention. You don’t have to be injured to visit Dr. Abeles, and doing so can help to minimize the chances of injury through educated prevention techniques.
Still, many athletes do not consider the ways in which a sports medicine therapist could help them until they do experience an injury. In most cases, mild injuries do not require a visit to a sports therapist, but serious injuries, which include intense pain, swelling, and problems putting weight on the area, often require help from a knowledgeable sports therapist.
Dr. Abeles and his team are waiting to meet with you in their Castro Valley, California office to discuss any sports-related injuries, prevention plans, or questions you may have. Call 510-538-0430, or book an appointment online today.
