Boo-boos, Bruises, and Bad Backs

Vibrant Life, Jan, 2001 by Larry Becker

Sunday afternoon after last Thanksgiving was fairly pleasant here in Maryland. So instead of watching a couple football games on TV, I found myself out in my yard throwing a football to my 8-year-old son and three of his neighborhood pals.

I've gone out to "play" games with these four little guys before, and their attention span is usually about 20 or 30 minutes. Then they're off riding bikes or Rollerblading, and I'm back to whatever I was doing. But on this particular Sunday all four of them just kept going strong. Two boys would pretend they were football wide receivers going out for passes, while the other two were defensive players. Before each pass, each one would announce which particular National Football League player they were pretending to be. I was the full-time quarterback, and I was pretending I was John Elway. (Of course, I didn't tell them that.)

We averaged about two plays per minute. After a while I began to notice that my shoulder was sending some pain messages to my brain. I glanced at my watch and realized I had been throwing passes for almost two hours! More than 200 passes! "Hey, guys! How about some Rollerblading?" I said. And off they went, just like that.

I went back into the house to check on how the day's NFL games were going. But after I had been sitting quietly for a few minutes, my shoulder started paying me back. It hurt! A couple ibuprofen tablets helped, but my shoulder was quite sore for several days.

A couple days later I was sitting at my desk, shoulder throbbing, when I came across a news release from the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons. With the oldest baby boomers starting to turn 55 this year, the physician group did some research and came up with some surprising statistics. More than 1 million baby boomers suffer exercise- and sports-related injuries annually. More than 300,000 of those injuries require a trip to a hospital emergency room. Medical costs for these types of injuries alone total more than $84 million. With so many slightly (or totally) out-of-shape boomers getting hurt each year, the AAOS has labeled the phenomenon "boomeritis."

While most people notice such things as gray hair and wrinkles, there are a lot of internal changes taking place as we age too. Muscle loss usually begins in your mid-40s, and it's possible to lose 30 percent of your muscle mass over a 20-year period. Tendons and ligaments often lose elasticity and contribute to joint stiffening, limited range of motion, and vulnerability to injury. Hey, boomeritis happened to me!

So now we baby boomers have a disease named after us. But what can we do about it? Well, the good news is that regular exercise can delay or even reverse many of the changes age brings. And the AAOS reminds us to stretch before and after exercising. They also suggest that we increase our activity in increments--no more than about a 10 percent increase over what you normally do.

I learned that afternoon that I'm no John Elway. I was just one sore dad. I know I'll be more careful in the future. But whenever I have a chance to throw 200 passes to four 8-year-olds, well, I'll trade boomeritis for the memories anytime.