We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

In a column in today’s Vancouver Sun Pete McMartin makes the case for including Paralympians in the Olympic games:

It has always been my understanding that the disabled want the same rights we all enjoy — access to buildings, non-discriminatory hiring practices, inclusion in classrooms. They want normality, to as great a degree as they can possibly have.

As for being inspired by that, that is a construct of the able-bodied, not the disabled. Paralympians don’t want to be seen as inspirational, or at least a sense of modesty would dictate they wouldn’t: They want to be seen as athletes competing in a sport they love. They compete because it’s fun and because they want to win, not because they want to make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Read the full column here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

A lift line conversation at a ski hill turned into an extra curricular project for some Universatity of Calgary students – their result is the EVO (evolution one) mono Sit-Ski in use at the 2010 Paralympic Wintr Games in Vancouver.

Trent Edwards with Canwest News Service details how it all happened and how this new sit-ski  innovation may ultimately get more disabled skiers back on the slopes:

“It’s basically a lot simpler,” Jim Chew (University of Calgary sit-ski innovator) says.

And cheaper. At an expected sale price of about $2,000, the new sit-ski would be two to three times cheaper than most models in the market today. A sit-ski buyer would still need to pick up a regular alpine ski with a binding and two “outriggers” (a pole with a special grip and small ski attached to the bottom that a sit-skier uses to keep their balance while turning), which would cost at least a thousand dollars when bought new. But members of the Calgary chapter of CADS (the Canadian Association for Disabled Skiing) expect the far-less-expensive sit-ski will remove the biggest barrier to attracting more disabled people to their sport.

“It makes it much more affordable for an individual who just wants to be a recreational skier with their family, and also for small groups that want to start a sit-ski club,” says Tony Crook, the assistant ski school director for Calgary CADS.

Read the full story here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

Doping control is in full swing with the Paralympics underway – with testing just as rigourous for the Paralympian athletes as it was for their Olympian counterparts . An Canadian Press article by Helen Branswell details one of the major anomalies between Olympic amd Paralympic testing and cheating detection:

For one thing, athletes who are partially paralyzed can take advantage of a side-effect of their condition to give themselves a competitive edge. In the Paralympic world, it’s a technique called boosting.

Certain stimuli that would cause pain in people who aren’t paralyzed can trigger what’s called autonomic dysreflexia, a situation where the blood pressure rises sharply. That can give athletes a significant edge in events which involve distance racing, for instance.

At the Winter Paralympics, the sport where boosting might be used is cross-country skiing. At the Summer Games, it’s sometimes seen in rowing, cycling, athletics and swimming, he says.

Some of the techniques used to trigger autonomic dysreflexia can’t be detected easily. So medical officers at events where it may be in use can ask to check an athlete’s blood pressure before an event.

If the systolic blood pressure reading (the higher figure) is above 180, the athlete is informed he or she will be tested again in a few minutes. If the second test shows the systolic blood pressure reading is still over that threshold, the athlete isn’t allowed to compete, Van de Vliet says.

Read the full article here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

Gary Kingston in today’s Vancouver sun has an inspiring story about Canadian sledge hockey goalie Paul Rosen and how he triumphed to overcome injury, addiction and find the love of his life:

…But in 1997, the weakened leg broke again when he simply stood up at a German airport. During the next 18 months, his health deteriorated as doctors operated 14 more times and tried to combat a staph infection with myriad medications and painkillers, to which he eventually became addicted.

In 1999, doctors told him they had to amputate or he’d be dead in three months.

Read the full story here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

Derrick Penner in today’s Vancouver Sun profiles North Van’s Rob Mulder – one of the people who combines his sport technology know-how along with his passion for the paralympian athletes into building their equipment:

Athletes arrive at Mulder’s shop with varying degrees of backing from sponsors or other funders, such as WorkSafeBC or the Insurance Corp. of B.C.

Sometimes Mulder can charge his normal rates; other times he finds himself donating what amounts to thousands of dollars worth of his time.

“How do you not help these guys when they have such great goals?” he asked.

“I know I’m giving a lot of myself into this, and it’s not good business,” he said. “But I’m not a good businessman.”

And it isn’t a full-time business for Mulder, a composites fabricator who got his start making high-tech windsurf boards, and got into supplying disabled athletes by chance when wheelchair marathoner Kelly Smith came to him for a wheel repair.

Read the full story here.

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Leslie Beck writes in the Globe & Mail on how Canadians can start doing a better job of getting the daily required amounts of calcium, magnesium, folate, potassium, iron and zinc.

We’ve heard over and over that a diet rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables and legumes guards against many health problems including heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers, to name only a few.

These foods provide important vitamins and minerals and offer plenty of natural compounds, such as fibre and phytochemicals, which help our bodies fend off disease.

Yet, despite the wealth of science that supports the benefits of a healthy, nutrient-packed diet, many Canadians continue to shortchange themselves when it comes to vitamins and minerals.

Leslie breaks down what various nutrients do and where you can get them from:

Iron

It helps transport oxygen to cells and tissues, supports metabolism, and is used to make brain chemicals (neurotransmitters) that aid in concentration. It’s also needed to manufacture many proteins and enzymes in the body.

There are two forms of iron in foods: heme and non-heme iron. Heme iron is found in all animal foods and is easily absorbed. Iron in plant foods such and legumes and green vegetables, is called non-heme iron and is less efficiently absorbed. (Adding a vitamin-C-rich food to a plant-based meal will improve the absorption of non-heme iron.

Best food sources for heme iron: beef, oysters, clams, turkey, chicken, tuna, pork loin and halibut.

For non-heme iron: Ready-to-eat breakfast cereal, instant oatmeal, soybeans, lentils, baked beans, black beans, firm tofu, cooked spinach, raisins and prune juice.

Read the full article here.

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A just released study shows that playing football on the artificial Field Turf surface versus natural grass caused NFL players more injuries says a report published in US News:

Researchers analyzed data from the 2002-2008 National Football League seasons and found that teams playing on FieldTurf had an 88 percent higher rate of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and a 48 percent higher rate of eversion ankle sprains (foot twists outward).

Per team game, the rate of all reported game-related lower extremity injuries was 27 percent higher on FieldTurf than on natural grass.

Read more here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

From an athlete profile of  BC paralympian Jody Barber by Yvonne Zacharias  in today’s Vancouver Sun:

Philosophy of life: “Life is 10 per cent what happens to you and 90 per cent how you respond to it. You have to find an activity that you love so you’ll want to keep doing it and want to improve. You don’t really know right away how that lifestyle will benefit you. I remember talking to my mom a few days after my accident and I said that for the last year-and-a-half, I thought I was training for this huge triathlon but really, I was training to save my arm. I just didn’t know that at the time.”

Read the full profile here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

From an article by Yvonne Zacharias in today’s Vancouver Sun:

Although no one was making any bold predictions Tuesday, Jean-Sebastien Labrie and Jean-Francois Rapatel, head coach and high performance director respectively of the team, were sounding optimistic as they announced Canada’s 16 ski racers.

“Our athletes are at the end of the most successful Paralympic cycle in their history,” said Labrie, pointing out that last year the team was at the top of the Nation’s Cup standings for the first time.

He refused to predict how many medals the team will win in the Games which start Friday but he is well aware that it will be up to the downhill ski racers to be a key contributor to the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s goal of being one of the top three nations in terms of overall medal count.

Read the full story here.

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We take you behind the scenes this month with our timely Vancouver Games Blog, an insider perspective on sport medicine and science headlines, talking points, statistical data and emerging trends.

From a story by Randy Shore in today’s Vancouver Sun:

The 2010 Winter Paralympic Games figure to be a major coming-out party for Canada’s disabled athletes and their stories are as thrilling and inspiring as anything you witnessed at the Olympic Games. If you take the time to watch, you will cheer and you will cry.

So far, most of you have not taken the time to watch or read or listen, but that’s not entirely your fault. It’s not entirely ours either, but partly. If our only criterion for choosing stories to write was the quality of the drama, you would read a lot more stories about Paralympians.

Read more here.

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