Medical Questions » Hands Questions » Question No. 478
| Question: | I was intrigued to read that Greg Norman has a wrist injury that cannot be cured unless he stops playing golf! How does the body cope with the strain of hitting 500 golf balls a day over a period of years, and do the joints wear out, or does the body cope with no detrimental effects? |
| Answer: | The problem you have raised is one that plagues virtually all world class sportspeople in almost every sport, and also significantly affects many players at far lower levels of competence.
If any piece of machinery is used excessively, it will wear out sooner than it should. If a car is repeatedly stopped using the hand brake, the hand brake will wear out and fail long before the rest of the car shows any sign of deterioration.
In a golfer, if the wrists and back are put under far greater stress than the rest of the body, these joints will develop arthritis and othet problems at a far younger age than would normally be expected.
Strapping and elastic cuffs around the affected joint can protect it to some extent, as can exercises to strengthen the muscles around the joint.
Unfortunately, nothing really works adequately, and general practitioners and orthopaedic surgeons see a steady stream of middle-aged ex-athletes with significant deterioration in their joints. Footballers have bad knees, tennis players bad elbows, runners bad ankles and golfers bad wrists—almost every sport (with the possible exception of swimming) has its casualties.
|
|
|
