Asian Journal of Sports Medicine
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Jun 2010

There is strong and consistent evidence that eating disorders are prevalent in sport and especially in weight sensitive sports such as endurance, weight category and aesthetic sports as well as jumping events. These illnesses are not only common but lead to significant physical and psychological morbidity and impaired performances.
Sports organizations, and by extension the professionals whose job it is to help and support athletes, have important roles in dealing with these conditions. Preventative practices can be adopted if there is an understanding of how the sports environment contributes to the development of eating disorders. Some disorders can be difficult to detect especially in a sports environment and simple screening instruments are available. Athletes may also need help to access appropriate treatment whilst they are recovering.
In many sports prevention, screening and support programs have been developed for a variety of medical conditions or sports-related injuries. Similar programs should be developed for eating disorders.

The aim of this critical appraisal and hazards of surface electromyography (SEMG) is to enhance the data acquisition quality in voluntary but complex movements, sport and exercise in particular. The methodological and technical registration strategies deal with telemetry and online data acquisition, the placement of the detection electrodes and the choice of the most adequate normalisation mode.
Findings compared with the literature suggest detection quality differences between registration methods and between water and air data acquisition allowing for output differences up to 30% between registration methods and up to 25% decrease in water, considering identical measures in air and in water. Various hazards deal with erroneous choices of muscles or electrode placement and the continuous confusion created by static normalisation for dynamic motion. Peak dynamic intensities range from 111% (in archery) to 283% (in giant slalom) of a static 100% reference. In addition, the linear relationship between integrated EMG (IEMG) as a reference for muscle intensity and muscle force is not likely to exist in dynamic conditions since it is muscle -joint angle - and fatigue dependent. Contrary to expectations, the literature shows 30% of non linear relations in isometric conditions also.
SEMG in sport and exercise is highly variable and different from clinical (e.g. neurological) EMG. Choices of electrodes, registration methods, muscles, joint-angles and normalisation techniques may create confusing and often erroneous or incomparable results.

Every sport has a unique profile of injury and risk of injury. In recent years, there have been numerous attempts at conducting injury prevention trials for specific injuries or for injuries within specific sports to provide evidence useful to the sports medicine and sport community. Football has been a focus of a number of randomized injury prevention trials.
MEDLINE was searched with the first order keywords of "injury prevention" and "sport". This list was restricted to "clinical trial" or "randomized controlled trial" which had been conducted on children and adults whose goal was preventing common football injuries. Our objective was to find studies with an exercise-based training program, thus projects that used mechanical interventions were excluded.
A structured, generalized warm-up has been shown to be effective at preventing common injuries in football, reducing injuries by about one-third.
The huge participation numbers in the worldwide family of football would suggest that any reduction in injury should have a public health impact. Professionals in sports medicine need to promote injury prevention programs that have been shown to be effective.

Nutrition is an important component of any physical fitness program. The main dietary goal for active individuals is to obtain adequate nutrition to optimize health fitness and to increase sports performance. The present study aims to assess the nutrition knowledge, attitude and practice among the selected athletes.
Athletes from five different private colleges situated in Salem District, Tamilnadu, India were selected. A total number of 102 athletes, 32 sportsmen belong to Volleyball discipline, 25 belongs to weightlifter discipline and 45 belong to runners discipline in sports. All the selected athletes were including in the study. The Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) questionnaire contained ten questions about nutrition knowledge, nine questions about attitudes, and ten questions about dietary practice were collected from the selected athletes. Dietary composition of the sportsmen is also assessed. The collected data was coded and used for evaluation.
Results about KAP revealed that 42 per cent of the volleyball players had good nutritional knowledge (60 - 69per cent) compared to weight lifters (43per cent) who had satisfactory (50 - 59per cent) knowledge about nutrition. Twenty nine per cent of the runners had very good (70 - 79per cent) knowledge about nutrition. Regarding food consumption pattern intake of cereals, other vegetables and milk was found to be less compared to the RDA for the athletes. Among the three disciplines sports persons, the mean nutrient intake of the runners is high compared to volleyball and weight lifters.
The sports disciplines strongly affected the nutrition knowledge, attitudes and practices of sportsmen. The overall scores indicate that most sportsmen had good knowledge of nutrition and supplements.

Accurate measurement or prediction of fat mass is useful in physiology, nutrition and clinical medicine. Most predictive equations currently used to assess percentage of body fat or fat mass, using simple anthropometric measurements were derived from people in western societies and they may not be appropriate for individuals with other genotypic and phenotypic characteristics. We developed equations to predict fat mass from anthropometric measurements in young Indian adults.
Fat mass was measured in 60 females and 58 males, aged 20 to 29 yrs by using hydrostatic weighing and by simultaneous measurement of residual lung volume. Anthropometric measure included weight (kg), height (m) and 4 skinfold thickness [STs (mm)]. Sex specific linear regression model was developed with fat mass as the dependent variable and all anthropometric measures as independent variables.
The prediction equation obtained for fat mass (kg) for males was 8.46 .32 (weight) - 15.16 (height) 9.54 (log of sum of 4 STs) (R2= 0. 53, SEE=3.42 kg) and - 20.22 0.33 (weight) 3.44 (height) 7.66 (log of sum of 4 STs) (R2=0.72, SEE= 3.01kg) for females.
A new prediction equation for the measurement of fat mass was derived and internally validated in young Indian adults using simple anthropometric measurements.

Estimating wind chill index as one of the indexes effective in body comfort, specifically for athletes and tourists interested in winter sports.
Meteorology data including temperature and the percentage of relative humidity of 6 synoptic stations of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiyrai province, Iran from 1990 to 2007 were extracted from Iranian Meteorology Site. In order to calculate the values of wind chill, the innovative formula of NOAA Meteorology Services Center [T (WC)= 35.74.6215T-35.75V.4275TV] was used.
After analyzing wind in all stations, it became evident that the great percentage of wind calm related to fall, and spring had the most wind distortions. In studying the mean temperature during this studying period, Koohrang station with mean of 9.8ºC was identified as the coldest station and Lordegan with a mean of 17ºC represented the warmest station of the region observed. According to degrees derived from wind chill index, Koohrang station in January with a mean of -28.75 was known as the coldest and roughest station.
Among the studied stations, Koohrang had the most intensive degrees of wind chill occurrence and Lordegan had the calmest conditions. Therefore, athletes and tourists should use warmer clothes and covers in cold seasons in Koohrang in comparison with other studied regions, in order to protect themselves from the negative effects of sudden cold and occurrence of intense wind chills

The objective of this study was to compare the Iranian taekwondo-in statistically in terms of total injury rates to international counterparts as gleaned from the extant literature.
The Iranian sample consisted of 204 male taekwondo-in participating in the national championship. The international sample included the participants in national and international tournaments. Validated standard questionnaires were employed at all tournaments to collect injury data that were always diagnosed by the respective tournament physicians. An injury was defined as any circumstance for which assistance was sought from the medical personnel. In addition to injury rates, 95% confidence intervals (CIs) around the rates were computed. To assess which group was at higher risk, odds ratios were calculated, including the 95%CIs.
Compared to Greek counterparts, the injury rate for the Iranian taekwondo-in was statistically significantly higher. The Iranians were also at a higher risk to incur an injury: OR = 11.2 (95%CI: 6.60 - 18.88, P < 0.001, CLR = 2.86). When comparing the Iranian taekwondo-in to their colleagues competing at the 1999 World Championships, the former recorded a statistically significantly lower injury rate but the latter were not at a higher risk (OR = 0.61, 95%CI: 0.41 - 0.91, P=0.014, CLR = 2.20).
A statistical comparison of total injury rates in Iranian and international taekwondo-in revealed no difference between the two groups. However, what is of concern is that the total injury rate across taekwondo studies is significantly higher than those reported for American football.