Tag: Injury

Bad Habits in Sports

Sports are fun to watch and to play, as long as you curb your bad habits. To be successful at any sport, you need to develop the behavior patterns that will lead to winning. A part of this is avoiding certain bad habits.

Taking care of the body should be of utmost importance to anyone who wants to play sports seriously. Smoking and drinking are bad habits that do not mix well with sports. Smoking cuts a person’s breathing capabilities. It makes the person gasp for air after a short practice run.

Drinking alcohol is another bad habit for athletes. It dehydrates the body and slows coordination. However, drinking other fluids is necessary. Some sports players have the bad habits of not keeping themselves hydrated. This should not happen, since there are usually plenty of water and electrolyte-rich drinks available at the event.

Sports players are often entrenched in their bad habits of not getting enough sleep. They are wound up after practices or games and do not feel like going to bed early. They get up to start their training on an early schedule. If they push themselves too hard, they will find that these bad habits will end up taking them out of the game.

An athlete should never start to play without some sort of stretching or warm-up exercises. Yet, bad habits often prevail. People begin doing their sport without the slightest thought to getting ready. This is important even for a professional athlete. It often happens, though, that an amateur athlete will be more careless about. They do not make it their business to do everything right.

Sometimes people who play sports occasionally think they can be athletes without much practice. They have the bad habit of doing nothing for weeks or months on end. Then, they jump in and do strenuous sports activities. They believe that they do not need to keep practiced and in shape. This can result in injury and exhaustion.

Not using proper safety equipment is a bad habit in sports. In professional sports, this equipment is required. If an NFL football player were to make it onto the field without his protective gear, he would be fined heavily.

In amateur games, people are not so careful about using safety equipment. They may play golf in slick dress shoes instead of golf shoes. This may cause them an injury if they slip and fall. A bicyclist may have the bad habit of not using a helmet if she is an amateur. This can be a dangerous mistake.

One bad habit people have in sports is not being team players. If a person tries to take all the glory, the team comes to resent him and will not back him up the way they should. If the person works with the team, the team will be a cohesive unit that can accomplish great things.

Sports can be fun activities or a great way to make a living. Either way, the way you conduct yourself will make all the difference in how you enjoy the game. So, suit up and leave your bad habits on the bench.

Bad Habits Can Be Expensive

Bad habits can be very expensive to maintain. Never mind that they are annoying to others. Do not think about the pain you cause yourself, if you do not want to. Just remember that your bad habits are hitting you where it hurts-in your wallet.

Smoking has always been a bad habit to have. In past times, people smoked more cigarettes, but cigarettes were cheaper. Now, many people have cut down on the number of cigarettes they smoke per day. Yet, those few are more expensive now than the many were back then. That’s accounting for inflation, too.

This is because lawmakers have seen fit to put large taxes on cigarettes. In many areas, the taxes are set to go up even higher. Some states are planning hikes of $10 per carton. If that will not stop you from smoking, what will?

Alcohol, too, is a bad habit that is subject to sin tax. It depends on how expensive your taste in alcohol is whether it will cost you more or less. Usually, most people will go to drinking less expensive alcohol as their dependency grows. However, it is not unusual for someone to go to a bar on a Friday night and spend their paycheck on alcohol.

Many people get into bad habits of taking prescription drugs when they have an injury, such as a back injury. They may be given muscle relaxants and strong pain relievers to get them through the first painful days. This is a reasonable medical response to their condition.

Yet, the medication helps them feel so good that they will want to get more. They may go back to the doctor to get more. If the doctor will not agree, they may go to different doctors to get different prescriptions. All these doctor visits and prescriptions usually come with a price tag. Then, when that no longer works, they will go to get their pain relief medications on the streets. It will cost even more to keep up their bad habits.

Of course, people who have bad habits with illegal drugs probably have some of the most expensive bad habits of all. Whether it is cocaine, heroin, marijuana, or methamphetamine, there are no cheap drugs. At least, there will not be an unlimited supply of cheap drugs. If a person truly has a bad habit with one of these drugs, they will always want more until they quit. The cost can get to be astronomical.

Gambling can lead people into financial hardship. Some people have such bad habits with gambling that they lose their houses and everything else they own. They may be in staggering debt on top of that. Now that there is online gambling, they cannot even get away from their bad habits by staying home.

Shopaholics spend money like there is no tomorrow. This bad habit can destroy a budget. It can take money away from things that need to be paid, like a mortgage or car payment.

It is clear that these bad habits are costly in the short run. Many of them are also costly over time, as health issues settle in. The cost of cigarettes is high, for example, but the cost of lung cancer is very much higher. Ridding yourself of these bad habits can only help your finances to get better.

Addictive Bad Habits

The question is: “Are addictions actually bad habits?” According to the habit model of addiction, they are. This theory of addiction states that the only reason to say there is a difference is to persecute “addicts.”

People with bad habits of smoking often feel much persecuted. While smoking is not illegal (at least not yet), it is shunned by society as a whole. At first, you could smoke anywhere. Expecting fathers smoked in the maternity waiting rooms. Then, you could smoke in buildings, but only in a designated smoking room.

Then there came the designated smoking area outside the building. Now restaurants, bars, and whole cities are going smoke-free. It seems that a lot of people have given up their bad habits. However, they do not seem to remember how badly they were addicted before. The truth is that in a way, they are still addicted and always will be. That is how addiction works.

In an effort to save others from the ill effects of their second hand smoke, many people have switched their bad habits to smokeless tobacco. Just because the tobacco is not smoked, though, it does not mean the nicotine is not addictive. It is said to be just as hard a bad habit to break as cigarettes. People quitting it use patches and nicotine gum or Zyban, too.

Sleeping pills are bad habits to get into as well. They can be so addictive that you need a higher and higher dosage to fall asleep. Eventually, they will not help at all. Some people overdose in an attempt to reach a dose that will put them to sleep. It usually takes intervention by a doctor and/or a sleep clinic to straighten you out.

Alcohol can be a bad habit if you drink to excess. For some people with certain physical conditions, it can be risky anyway. It can be dangerous if mixed with particular medications. However, if a person is addicted to alcohol, they will not be concerned with that. Neither will they be concerned about their jobs or their relationships. It will all be about the next drink.

Drugs pose a variety of bad habits. There are so many illegal drugs that they are too numerous to count. They have different affects and cause different levels of addiction. Some have fast and devastating results. Others do little damage in the short run. Yet, they are all bad habits.

There are club drugs, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and hallucinogens. All these drugs can be nasty. There are also legal drugs that people get into bad habits with by starting with an injury or other medical condition. These can be pain pills like percocet, or muscle relaxants. They are also very addictive bad habits.

If you have an addictive bad habit, you probably need some form of help to get over it. In fact, once you have a serious addiction, experiencing the sights, smells, or sounds of your addiction will start your brain in that addictive mode again. It is no wonder that people struggle for years with addictive bad habits.

Steroid Use Causing Problems in Sports Medicine

There are always athletes who feel the need to use steroids while playing sports. While many organizations prohibit the usage, the doctors in the sports medicine field tend to be the real people who are fighting the effects of steroids on a daily basis.

Some of the most prevalent symptoms that sports medicine doctors are forced to deal with include mood swings, violent behavior, depression, and psychoses. The good news is that all of these symptoms are reversible with treatment once the use of the steroids stops; however some other conditions are not as easily reversed.

The use of steroids can alter numerous systems in the body, and how they react in terms of permanent or temporary is very important in terms of working to treat the effects. As the number of athletes guilty of using steroids is steadily decreasing there are fewer problems that doctors are trying to counter, however the use of steroids is still happening which causes the problems to still persist even if at a slower level.

While sports medicine doctors do not typically treat reproductive issues, they are finding themselves engaged in more aspects as the use of steroids can hinder several components. For example, in men it can alter the libido, as well as cause male pattern baldness and even cause impaired spermatogenesis amongst the other problems that include testicular atrophy and gynecomastia. However, of all of the problems, only male pattern baldness is entirely non-reversible with treatment. However, there are times when even gynecomastia is unable to be successfully treated once steroid use has been discontinued.

Women tend to have greater reproductive problems with the use of steroids with the risks causing problems with menstrual cycles, an altered libido, deepened voice, pattern baldness, and even clitoral enlargement. The good news is that the libido as well as menstrual cycle can be restored, while the other results of steroid use at this point are not a reversible complication. This means that each year, women who stop taking steroids are still left with the results to deal with, much more so than men are.

Steroids also have the unfortunate problem of negatively affecting the cardiovascular system, which in athletes much be as healthy as possible in order to achieve the best results. With increased LDL cholesterol levels, reduced HDL cholesterol levels, as well as complications with hypertension, elevated triglycerides and even the potential of arteriosclerotic heart disease the use of steroids has several devastating effects on the athletes overall health.

While there are rare and few doctors who will encourage the use of steroids, a well trained doctor will be able to identify signs that an athlete is using steroids and will do their best to help discourage their usage. While obviously the final choice on using steroids lies with the athlete, a good sports medicine doctor should be able to identify based on signs, which athletes are using.

Because of the risks associated with the cardiovascular system as well as musculoskeletal system, using steroids can actually cause more harm to the body than it can provide in benefits. In addition to the complications associated with the cardiovascular system that were already discussed, it can create complications with tendon degeneration, which is potentially not reversible. This creates a huge problem with weakened tendons that are much more susceptible to injury even after steroid use has stopped. Overall, steroid use represents a huge problem to sports medicine doctors all around the world.

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