The specialty of sports medicine is a clinical specialty that prevents, treats, and rehabilitates sports injuries and diseases related to sports in professional and non-professional athletes, improves the level of performance of athletes, and uses sports in the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of diseases and promotes health.
Sports Medicine Specialists
Sports medicine specialist and sports medicine is a specialty of medical science that is also known as sports medicine. A medical specialty specialist studies the health of athletes and the use of sports to maintain the general health of humans. In addition, it helps in the treatment, rehabilitation, and prevention of sports injuries.
One of the great medical challenges of this century is to slow down or reverse the process of immobilization of societies. Technological advances in the last century have saved energy and time. However, these advances have led to the formation of a society that generally requires less physical activity compared to other periods of human life.
Medical disorders such as obesity, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and mental illness are all related to a sedentary lifestyle. It has been well established that exercise is beneficial in the treatment of each of these disorders. Studies show that people with regular physical activity contribute to creating a healthy and vibrant society. The increase in health care costs, which have become a big challenge in health-oriented macro-decisions, emphasizes a strong need to promote sports and physical activity based on medical science and physical education.
Training in the specialty of sports medicine leads to the training of doctors and sports medicine specialists with specific skills that enable them to prevent and treat diseases and disorders caused by sports and encourage and guide people to follow an active lifestyle.
Knowing the health benefits of physical activity and optimal exercise regimens for specific subgroups allows medical specialty professionals to encourage an active lifestyle for groups that benefit the most from exercise.
Sports Medicine Specialist Skills and Abilities
- The ability to evaluate, diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate soft tissue injuries and sports injuries that do not require surgery in athletes
- Measuring physical fitness
- The ability to exercise therapy and prescribe exercise prescription for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases referred by the relevant specialist
- The ability to use medical measures to improve the performance of athletes
- The ability to monitor and control nutrition, rehabilitation, psychology, and bodybuilding programs of athletes and provide advice in cases of need
- The ability to assess the health status of athletes, including pre-exercise examinations
- The ability to manage and run the medical specialty team in sports clubs and teams
- Ability to handle medical specialty emergencies
- The ability to prescribe exercise for particular groups, including the elderly, women, children and teenagers, and disabled athletes
- Ability to design and conduct applied research in various fields of sports medicine
- The ability to use exercise science and rehabilitation techniques in rehabilitating sports injuries
- Prescribing exercise therapy programs in water and land and corrective movements
- Ability to design and conduct applied research in various fields of sports medicine
Sports and ancient medicine
In his law book, Ibn Sina has dedicated essays to topics related to the medical specialty. Subjects such as the effect of exercise on health, the effects of various types of massages, exercise in children and the elderly and how to deal with fatigue caused by exercise and its treatment, the benefits and harms of exercise in diseases and injuries caused by exercise are among the topics that are part of the law book.
Galen, a Greek physician in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC, presented a new approach to health and hygiene, which can be called the applied physiology of exercise. The same doctor reported the use of stimulating plant products to increase the performance of athletes in ancient Greece. A record of athletes using massage and a special diet for 10 months before the start of the ancient Greek Olympic Games has been found.
Various types of diets were recorded by Promous, the two-time champion of endurance races in 43 BC, and the modified forms of this diet were recorded by Gardine in various sports in the history of the Olympics. These cases indicate that although the title of medical specialty is related to the last century, its background is equal to the background of medical science and sports.
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Sports medicine in the world
Although the field of sports medicine has been proposed as a specialized field of medicine in the last few decades, its history is closely linked with the history of sports, and since sports existed, medical issues related to sports have been discussed alongside it. In a medical book found in India called Arthava-Veda, which is related to 800 to 100 years before Christ, the therapeutic effects of exercise are mentioned. With the expansion of sports, human knowledge regarding sports medicine increased, especially in the aspect of sports injuries and sports rehabilitation.
Fields of education and training of sports medicine specialists in sports medicine
Although from the point of view of many, the topic of sports medicine is more limited to the treatment of injuries and the rehabilitation of the injured, and the control of the general health of athletes, gradually the scope of this science has developed and includes the following topics:
- Sports physiology and adaptation conditions of the body in different environments
- Physiotherapy and rehabilitation of sports injuries
- Biomechanics of body movements and leading to wrong movements to get the most efficiency and the least damage
- sports injuries (diagnosis and treatment of injuries)
- Disorders and diseases caused by sports and how to deal with them
- Cardiopulmonary rehabilitation of patients
- Exercise therapy for patients with chronic diseases
- Sports nutrition and permitted sports and nutritional supplements
- sport psychology
- Exercise in patients and people with physical and mental disabilities
- Sports in children and adolescents
- How to recognize the use of illegal drugs and stimulants in sports
- Exercise in people with physical and mental disabilities
- Exercise in treating patients and preventing diseases
History of medical specialty
In the last century, with the expansion of the scope of knowledge, including medical science, on the one hand, and the quantitative and qualitative expansion of sports, on the other hand, attention to this field increased among academic knowledge. In 1928, the International Federation of Sports Medicine was founded during the Winter Olympics to help athletes. In 1950, the National Association of Athletic Trainers was established for the scientific training of athletic trainers, and then in 1951, the American Medical Association established a committee to study sports injuries, which continues to operate.
Perhaps this committee can be considered the first step towards academicizing the field of medical specialty. The largest medical specialty organization is the American College of medical specialty, which was founded in 1954. The field of activity of sports medicine specialists has made remarkable progress in recent years and now in several countries of the world medical specialty associations, sports medicine federations and sports medicine training fields are active in universities and at different levels.
