Transcription of Sports Medicine, #92
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Download past shows and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine; Marci Booth of Booth Maine; Apothecary by Design; Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedics Specialists; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage; Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes; and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 92; Sports Medicine, airing for the first time on Sunday June 16, 2013. Today’s guests include orthopedic surgeon Dr. John Herzog; Mike Chapman and Jim Greatorex of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical; and Jared Buzzell and Stanley Skolfied of Orthopedic Associates Performance Center in Saco.
Before we talk about our guests I’d like to remind you of a couple events coming up that I will be going to and I hope you will consider going to as well. The first is Taste of the Nation Maine, which will be taking place on June 13, 2013 at Wolfe’s Neck Farm in Freeport. The eighth annual Taste of the Nation Maine at Wolfe’s Neck Farm will include food from more than 30 of Maine’s most well-respected chefs. Spend the evening eating, drinking, bidding on fantastic items at the live and silent auction.
The 2012 Taste of the Nation Maine was a sold-out event, featuring two dozen of the state’s top chefs on Great Diamond Island in Casco Bay. With the support of local chefs and restaurants, sponsors, donors and the attendees, Share Our Strength Maine raised a record amount of money and granted more than $150,000 to local beneficiaries whose mission it is to end hunger in Maine.
The second event is the Maine Home and Design Show, which will take place on June 29th and 30, 2013 in Rockport. The Maine Home and Design Show will bring the pages of Maine Home and Design Magazine to life. The show features more than 150 exhibitors, the AIA pavilion and a popup gallery of works from Art Collector Maine. Join us from June 29th to June 30th for an experience like no other, and feel as though you are walking into a living version of the magazine. For more information on the 2013 Taste of the Nation and the Maine Home and Design Show, visit themainemag.com.
Today’s show is airing on Father’s Day, and happens to be about sports medicine. My father was one of my earliest sports heroes. Dad is a humble man and rarely speaks of his athletic prowess. However, those who knew him when have shared stories of his baseball skills while at St. Louis High School in Biddeford and his football team captaincy while at the University of Maine.
Dad’s skill on the playing field and love of physical pursuits has been passed down to his children and grandchildren. We have become marathoners and yoga instructors, little league all-stars and nationally ranked swimming competitors.
For most of us it is less about the win than it is about the game. We like being part of the action. It is important for each of us to find a way to be part of the action. Some people naturally gravitate towards group sports, while others prefer more solo pursuits. There is no one cookie-cutter approach to physical activity that can be easily applied to all people.
This week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour we acknowledge this reality through our conversations with Dr. John Herzog, Mike Chapman, Jim Greatorex, Stan Skolfield and Jared Buzzell. Each of our guests has a slightly different take on how individuals can best achieve optimal physical health. They are all similar, however, in their view that optimal physical health is entirely possible no matter what our genetic makeup or family background.
My father was one of my earliest sports heroes not because he was good at what he did, but because he loved what he did. He still does. He loves to work and he loves to play, above all he loves to share his life with his family. Happy Father’s Day to Charlie Belisle, the best dad a girl could hope for. Thank you for being my hero in every way.
Thank you for listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour this week. We hope you enjoy our conversations with Dr. John Herzog, Jared Buzzell and Stan Skolfield, Mike Chapman and Jim Greatorex.
Dr. Lisa When you think about orthopedic surgery, and vegan and vegetarian eating, there’s really only one doctor in the area whose name comes up. That is our very own Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists, right here in the Portland area. He’s coming in to talk us today about sports medicine, and vegetarian and vegan eating. Thanks for coming in.
Dr. Herzog: You’re very welcome. It’s always a pleasure to be here.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been an orthopedic surgeon for almost 30 years.
Dr. Herzog: Hard to believe, but yes.
Dr. Lisa: So you’ve seen a lot of sports injuries and you’ve seen a lot of people who aren’t injured but just want to maintain good health?
Dr. Herzog: Yes, I have seen the whole gamut from the horrific crash to the little child with an ankle sprain.
Dr. Lisa: What part does vegan eating or even just vegetarian eating, minimizing meat, what part does that have in maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle and even excelling in sports?
Dr. Herzog: I think it all comes down to when you consider food is the fuel that fuels our bodies, we would like to put in the best highest-octane fuel you can get. I believe truly that the plant-based diet gives us that. It’s a higher quality of food because it’s easier for us to absorb it.
When we have a good, clean running system we don’t produce a lot of residue. Just like a car with good gasoline, there’s not a lot of soot building up in the tailpipe and there’s not a lot of cavitating. That would be akin to having good circulation. If you have good circulation, that helps your muscles grow bigger, get stronger, have more endurance, and when they get hurt you repair them much faster. That’s the whole basis to the whole eating thing in my opinion.
Dr. Lisa: Does it also help people to stay leaner?
Dr. Herzog: Definitely helps you to stay leaner. Eating a complex carbohydrate, which is in the plant world very commonly, when you eat that food your intestines have to break that down. It takes energy to break down the food that you’re eating, and that in turn burns calories, which you can in fact lose a little weight while you are eating. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it works.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s talk about protein. This is something that comes up a lot whenever we discuss vegetarianism, veganism. We’ve had people on the show, we bring this question up a lot because this seems to be the primary concern: If I’m going to be a vegetarian or a vegan I won’t get enough protein and I won’t get enough iron. Is that true?
Dr. Herzog: I don’t believe that to be true at all. I think that there is more of a bent on people being concerned about protein than there is an actual protein shortage in the food world. You should not eat a high protein diet. It slows down your athletic performance, it creates more of an acidity in your body not an alkaline environment, which is good for metabolism, by eating high protein. I stick with the 10-10-80 rule: 10% protein of your calories, 10% fat and 80% carbohydrates, which are mostly complex carbohydrates. Protein shortage is not an issue.
Dr. Lisa: As you’re doing this 10-10-80 rule, how are you getting protein into your diet if you are just doing this from plants?
Dr. Herzog: As it would happen, plants are designed that way. They’re about 10% protein and 10% fat, and the rest are complex carbohydrates. So it’s very easy. You don’t have to concoct all kinds of potions, and pills, and oils, and incense and crystals or whatever, to have a good diet. You can basically eat 10 different plants and you get all you need except maybe a little vitamin B12, which is always the big question. I’m sure that’s coming.
Dr. Lisa: Let’s talk about vitamin B12. You’ve set up the question nicely, so go ahead.
Dr. Herzog: Vitamin B12 is really high in meats that have a lot of blood, because blood has a lot of vitamin B12 in it. You do need to supplement a little bit of vitamin B12, which you can do in a pill. But most of the vegetarian foods that are fortified, let’s say like cereal, yogurt, soy milk, they’re full of vitamin B12. You really don’t need to get it by eating a piece of cow liver.
Dr. Lisa: You yourself are vegetarian, you’ve been vegan. Are you still vegan?
Dr. Herzog: I’m vegan, but I will admit and I can’t march the party line 100%; something about squid I really like, and it would be considered non-vegan to eat that. So I say I’m mostly vegan.
Dr. Lisa: We’ll call you a squid-eating vegan.
Dr. Herzog: A squiditarian.
Dr. Lisa: A squiditarian, all right. It’s actually funny because I know people who are also bacon vegetarians. They eat all vegetables and they eat bacon. It’s a thing that people crave. I think this is a very normal part of being human, is you crave things. Sometimes you crave them because maybe you need the nutrients that are actually in them.
Dr. Herzog: It could be, but that crunchy sweetness of that fresh squid, I’ll tell you.
Dr. Lisa: Okay, so it’s also a texture thing, it’s a sensory thing. How do you yourself, because you also … you are a cyclist and you’re very active in your own life. Describe to me what your diet looks like.
Dr. Herzog: My diet is a very simple diet. I eat the same breakfast every morning. I have a bowl of granola with fresh fruit and either rice milk, soy milk or almond milk, because I can put it in a bowl and get out of the door in about five minutes. It’s very efficient for me. I don’t do any cooking in the morning.
Lunchtime varies. I eat a lot of hummus. I love hummus. I love pasta, I love fresh breads and I love pestos, I like nuts and have all kinds of little creative recipes where I can put those things together. I tend to bake in large batches or cook in large batches, and I’ll have some kind of a bean casserole or rice already in the refrigerator. I’ll just plop it all on a plate and put it in the oven. Lots of beans and rice and pasta, tomato sauce, breads. I get my 80% carb diet, that’s for sure.
Dr. Lisa: It sounds like one of the things that you do is to cook things in large batches, which is sort of an old-fashioned notion. We’re very much into, “take something out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, small portions”. But this is something that you are able to use as a tool to keep yourself eating healthy.
Dr. Herzog: Yes, and it keeps it simple. I love to cook, it’s a passion of mine, but why not cook enough that you could have another five meals and use your freezer? Growing up in a family where there was 10 of us in the family, we always cooked in large batches anyway. Economically, when you go to the store, a 10 lb. bag of potatoes is sometimes $3 or $4. Why not cook them all up and put some curry spice and onions and mushrooms and whatever you like, put it out in little portions and eat on that one energy-filled pot for the next five weeks. Stuff freezes really well.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of your favorite vegetarian or vegan foods, besides hummus?
Dr. Herzog: I like to make my own vegetarian pizzas. I already mentioned pesto. I’ve got a passion for pesto because I grow a bunch of basil in the summer and I freeze it, and it’s good all year. So I have pesto a lot.
I also like to cheat and go out to the local restaurants in town, like the Green Elephant, and eat their Tikka Marsala. I like Thai food. I always ask them to keep the egg out of the Thai, but Pad Thai. Although that would have a little bit of fish sauce in it, it wouldn’t be a pure vegan food, but it’s pretty close. Basically any type of stir-fry, Mexican bean burritos with rice and salsas and jalapeno, whatever. I’m not at lack of not having something to eat.
Dr. Lisa: How did you learn how to cook for yourself?
Dr. Herzog: It was kind of a family thing. My dad was a foodie and he travelled a lot to Europe. He knew all about the latest, what was going on in the fields. He’d go to pick the grapes to help … He was into winery, oenology and whatever the Europeans were making in their casolets or how they made their bread or their bagels, or what region had this and that food.
He’d bring that home to us. As children we had a huge more or less industrial kitchen with an eight-burner stove and four ovens. We were always cooking as part of keeping the family together, and had huge gardens. It was always considered like a sacrament, food. It was a blessing to have and fun to prepare.
Dr. Lisa: For people who don’t have that sort of background and that isn’t part of the family culture, or they don’t garden, who come to see you as patients and you’re trying to encourage them, “Maybe you should eat more vegetarian foods,” what types of resources do you offer them or where do you send them to learn how to do this?
Dr. Herzog: There’s a couple of those popular magazines, The Vegetarian Times or Veg News. I have a favorite cookbook called “The Veganomicon” by Chandra Isadora … I’m going to mess her last name up, but it’s a beautiful book and it’s written with humor. It tells you how to start a kitchen. What kind of strainer to buy, what kind of garlic press works the best, what kind of spices to put in your pantry, how you sautee, how you braise, how you fry, how to not be a heavy vegan, because vegans can get very heavy. Those little cookies and cupcakes we know how to make can get quite fattening.
But it goes through the whole process with a little tongue in cheek, more or less trying to fool people that, “Hey, they didn’t realize this was really good for them and they didn’t pick up any animal products when they ate it.”
Dr. Lisa: What about people who are specifically interested in being athletes? Are there things that you tell them to do as far as eating ahead of time, eating after, how to structure their diet over the long term?
Dr. Herzog: Before you have a long endurance run you want to have a lot of fuel built up in your liver called glycogen. You want to carbohydrate load generally 6-12 hours before you compete. If you’re an ultra athlete you have to consume products while you’re on the run, if you’re doing one of those 100-mile races. The average person can just load up on a nice high fiber, high carbohydrate, the 10% protein and with some oils in their diet. There’s no real specific magic formula that I have. I know there’s all the powders out there at Whole Foods. I’ve met Brendan Brazier, he has his own line of special stuff. I bought it and tried it, I just didn’t like the taste of it. I’m a soy and potato guy.
Dr. Lisa: Brendan Brazier is the author of “Thrive” I think.
Dr. Herzog: Right.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, so he is himself an endurance athlete who has embraced veganism.
Dr. Herzog: Yes, he has. He has his own protein powders. He believes in the smoothies and … which there’s nothing wrong with that, I just don’t have one of those machines so I haven’t gotten into it yet. Perhaps I will one day.
Dr. Lisa: We’ll return to our program in a moment. On the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we’ve long understood the important link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the subject is Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Tom: “Why do pro athletes go bankrupt?” I was reading an article with this title, but to me it missed the mark. Pro athletes lose big when they let drama and excitement constantly overtake balance and enjoyment. Is it the same for us amateurs? Most athletes have an inkling about what motivates them. They spend time trying to understand the ebb and flow of energy, and learn to control that energy to achieve their desired outcomes.
The same thing is true of managing our money. If we understand what scares us, what excites us and what bores us, we can keep the pace and the plan from blowing up. Making it to race day involves avoiding injury, getting up when we’re feeling down, eating well, getting enough rest, putting in the miles, and for most of us finding others to share the journey. We might not like a particular workout, but we know how to psyche ourselves up to get it done anyways. It’s like that with money.
Avoiding losses, not getting too excited when the markets are up or down, having a strategy that occasionally allows our money to rest, investing enough and doing it for a purpose are all ways that money can be coached to better prepare you for race day.
Congratulations, if you finished this year’s trek. Send us an email to [email protected] and let us help you prepare you for the big race. Happy Father’s Day.
Speaker 8: Securities offered through LPL Financial. Member FINRA SIPC. Investment advice offered through Flagship Harbor Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Flagship Harbor Advisors and Shepard Financial are separate entities from LPL Financial.
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Dr. Lisa: You’ve got an interest in a lot of different areas, and that’s what’s fascinating. As a physician you could have decided early on, “I’m just going to deal with this specific segment of medicine. I’m going to be an orthopedic surgeon, I’m going to do this.” You’ve decided to branch out.
Not only have you branched out into vegan foods and vegan or vegetarian eating, and feeding people in other parts of the world, but you’re also doing a lot of work with stem cells and you’re doing different things in your practice. Actually it’s been so successful you’re expanding your practice, or talking about expanding your practice into New Hampshire.
Dr. Herzog: Correct. Yeah, I’ve been onboard with trying to keep things efficient in orthopedics, and more or less in this region pioneered the use of an ultrasound machine instead of using MRIs and X-rays. You can have that machine in your office and show patients their rotator cuff, their Achilles tendonitis, where the break is. You can look at it, and that really helps lighten people up. They say, “Wow! That’s what it looks like.”
Also, having that technology where you can see in real time, that means while we’re both looking at it, I can numb something up and put a very small needle in it and we can inject it with a standard cortisone if need be or we can spin down. That would be taking some of your own blood out, putting it in a centrifuge and concentrating the stem cells and the platelets, and injecting it into an area that gets very poor blood supply, and cause it to grow new tissue like new muscle and tendons, like for plantar fasciitis, et cetera, type problems.
It’s like tilling the garden a little bit with a teeny needle, putting in some seeds and then a little fertilizer. As opposed to doing what I would normally have done with a knife, a chisel and a mallet, if I can do it with a little needle in my office it makes great sense. It’s may be 5% the cost of surgery and it works very well. Gaining that up a notch, I’m in negotiations right now to open a stem cell clinic in New Hampshire, which is going to be a bit more potent than the PRP I just spoke of, the centrifuge the blood. We actually use bone marrow and some belly fat with stem cells in it to inject. Here again, a real long answer.
Dr. Lisa: This is used for tendonitis and…?
Dr. Herzog: Tearing in rotator cuffs.
Dr. Lisa: Rotator cuffs.
Dr. Herzog: Tendonitis, muscle ruptures, of course the problems in the joint where people’s joints are wearing out. With stem cells and the appropriate environment injected into your joints, you can prevent arthritis of the knee. If you have the fear of having a total joint, hip, knee, ankle … I do, because I have quite an amount of arthritis in my body. You can prevent it by feeding your cartilage, just like you feed your skin and your muscles with PRP and stem cell injections. It prevents arthritis. That’s going to be the new rage.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve always been on the forefront. You were a vegan before anybody else was a vegan, and you were one of the first doctors to be really be doing that in this area. You’ve been networking with doctors nationally and internationally who have been espousing the idea of veganism and plant-based eating. I have every faith in that, that what you’re saying is so, that stem cells and PRP is the forefront of medicine.
Dr. Herzog: Right. Noninvasive and it is actually fun to do for me, so it keeps me technically in the game doing interesting things. I’m a blessed man.
Dr. Lisa: That’s good to know that, that you really enjoy doing what you’re doing because it’s important that people go to see a doctor who really wants to help them heal because he’s enjoying his own life.
Dr. Herzog: Right. Coming out of that, just to expound, sitting around the doctors lounge in between surgeries, it’s hard these days to see anybody with a smile on their face. There are always … 25% of everybody is happy, just no matter what. You can make them stay awake for three days and they still would be smiling. A lot of us get us burned out, and I see that in our profession quite a bit. It takes a toll on the doctor personally and patient care too, to a minor degree.
Dr. Lisa: Since we know that you’re a very fulfilled doctor and you offer all of these therapies for things physical, things emotional, how can people find out about you Dr. John Herzog and your practice?
Dr. Herzog: The best way would be to go to my website, which is orthocareme, like M-E like for the state of Maine. I think it’s www.orthocareme.com. Or they could look in the phone book under Dr. John P. Herzog, and pick the guy in Maine. There’s another one in New York and one in Michigan with the same name.
Dr. Lisa: We appreciate you coming in and talking to us today. As we are finishing up I think it’s interesting for people who are listening that you not only are an orthopedic surgeon, you are an Eagle Boy Scout. You’ve performed over 10,000 surgeries, seen over 150,000 patient visits, treated over 5,000 fractures, you’re a professor at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, you’ve performed more than 3,000 musculoskeletal ultrasounds, and you’re the first orthopedic surgeon to use ultrasound-guided PRP treatment on the East Coast, in addition to being a proponent of vegan eating and part of Little Lad’s Bakery and sending food across the ocean. Thank you so much for doing all that you do, and for having done all that you’ve done.
Dr. Herzog: Thank you very much. I sure hope I get a copy of this to my mother, she’ll be so proud.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been talking with Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists right here in the Portland area. We appreciate you coming in.
Dr. Herzog: Oh thank you, it’s always a pleasure.
Dr. Lisa: Here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we hope that our listeners enjoy their own work lives to the same extent we do and fully embrace every day. As a physician and a small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me with my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: It is true that the first Father’s Day was celebrated on July 19, 1910 because the governor of Washington State declared it a holiday. It wasn’t actually until 1972, 58 years after Mother’s Day was made official by President Woodrow Wilson did President Nixon sign a decree giving the day official holiday status. It took a long time for people to recognize that fathers, like mothers, should have a day of their own to celebrate.
Of course we all know that when it comes to parenting fathers and mothers desserve credit for child rearing, and not just one day a year. Each day we are juggling schedules, making plans and doing what we have to do to make certain our children are happy, healthy and prepared for the future.
It’s really the same thing with our personal finances. We can’t just take one day a year to sort everything out and think our job is done. We must stay on top of budgets and plan expenses and savings on a daily basis in order to be prepared for the future. But like the stressed parent who has so many balls up in the air with their kids, sometimes a little help can make a huge difference to take the pressure off.
That’s when Booth can help. If you find that you want to spend a little less time managing your personal finances a little more time enjoying life, we are here. To all the dads out there, Happy Father’s Day. I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need: boothmaine.com.
Speaker 11: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With RE/MAX Heritage, it’s your move. Learn more at ourheritage.com.
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Dr. Lisa: As a doctor in the community, I’ve known about Black Bear Medical for many years. When I heard that they were starting to do something new and innovative, I got very excited because I know that people who are interested in the health of the people of Maine are an innovative group. Today we have with us in the studio Mike Chapman, who is the director of marketing and sales, and Jim Greatorex, who is the president of Premier Sports Health, which is a division of Black Bear Medical. Thanks so much for coming in here today and having a conversation with me about this exciting new work that you’re doing at your store.
Mike: We’re very excited to be here, Dr. Lisa.
Jim: Yeah, thank you for having us.
Dr. Lisa: You’re wearing these great shirts, the Black Bear Medical shirts. I was in your store and this whole idea of the Black Bear is very Maine. You’ve been in the business 25 years here in Maine, so talk to me about that.
Mike: Black Bear Medical started out as a little tiny store on Forest Ave. Through the years we’ve grown now to our third location, which is down on Marginal Way. We have 13,000 sq. feet, a 5,500 sq. foot showroom, which is full of lots of innovative health-related products. We have certainly our … we’re known for being there for the seniors to stay at home and be safe. Then we now have our new division, which is our Premier Sports Health. I think we might have made up that word. We’re pretty excited about that.
In that division we have products for people who are active, athletes, they are people who want to get back into the game, maybe they have some pain related issues that are keeping them from doing it. We have some holistic pain products which we’re also very excited about, that work and they help people get back in the game.
Dr. Lisa: So what you’ve had to offer before and you still offer, this is still a big part of what you do, is ways to help people stay in their homes longer, help older people, maybe sicker people, people who have needs like wheelchairs and durable medical equipment they would call it. Now you’re getting towards people who they are out and about. You want to keep them out and about, out of their homes doing active things. It’s a slightly younger group, in general, I would think.
Jim: It is. The demographic I think prior to bringing some of these new products was 55 plus. Now we’re looking to focus on the 25 to 55 market as well, staying active products that will help people stay pain-free and support their well-being.
One of the new product lines that we’re very excited about is sports compression products. You may have seen in the Olympics many of the athletes wearing sleeves. What compression can do … and a compression product is basically a sleeve that is tight, and that you wear it … generally it’s used on your lower extremities.
What it does is it helps your body get the fluids to go through it at a 40% more efficient rate. If you’re in an athletic event that has some endurance involved, you may see your endurance increase due to the compression helping your body with the blood flow and the fluids going through, getting all the way back up to your heart from your legs.
Dr. Lisa: This is something that as a physician I’ve used for many years, is this RICE algorithm, which was always Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation for an injured body part. You’re talking about this compression element, that’s to help healing but also to help people’s performances.
Mike: It helps performance. There are actually products that help people before they are in an athletic event, during and recovery afterwards. There’s a lot of especially socks that you can wear afterwards that will make your recovery period be probably twice as quick as it might be without. Quite frankly, in Europe compression stockings are used from birth. They put their children into the long colored black socks. That’s why you see the Europeans walking around, we make fun of them, with their long black socks and their shorts and their sneakers. Quite frankly, if you really take a look they’ve got healthier legs than we do. So they may know something we don’t.
Dr. Lisa: You brought with you use some of these products. I think you’ve talked about some of them. You have some strength tape also, in addition it looks like, is that a triathlete suit? What are some of the things that you are carrying that you would like to tell the people who are listening about? I think they might find it useful, given the number of really fit and well individuals who like to listen to our show.
Jim: Yeah, so one of the things that we’ve started to carry is … which most folks may have heard of going to PT, is kinesiology tape. This actually is through a company called LifeStrength, and it’s called StrengthTape. We have started carrying this. It’s good for any type of injuries on the knee, shoulder, things where you may have pulled a muscle. What it does is it helps keep your muscles in place and help have the memory to heal in that place, rather than to be out and strained and irritated. This is a cheap way, inexpensive way I should say, to help support strains and pulls and things that need … that could need physical therapy, but this is a way to manage it at home and keep you doing the things that you want to do.
Dr. Lisa: Or people who’ve been to physical therapy and they’ve had it taped before, and they know generally where it needs to go. Then it’s something they could continue doing on their own. That’s another thing that we saw in the Olympics. I remember seeing volleyball players with all this stuff all over their shoulders and wondering what that was. It was the kinesiology tape.
Mike: Right, yeah.
Dr. Lisa: What else do you have?
Mike: We did bring in some of our compression apparel. We think of compression oftentimes and we’ve mentioned stockings, but we also have full suits for folks that are doing endurance in marathons or triathlons. We have cycling shorts. There’s also ski socks, which having good blood flow through your feet when you ski, a lot of people are cold with their feet and it actually is … I’ve used them. I just started to use them this year. It’s a big difference in how comfortable your feet are and it helps keep them warmer with the compression socks for your ski boots.
Dr. Lisa: That’s good to hear, because my feet always get cold when I’m skiing. Sometimes it keeps me from skiing. Maybe the idea is not to stop doing what I’m doing, but to change it and to add in something that might be helpful.
Jim: We had one of our first purchases, they wrote a testimonial. The gentleman oftentimes or pretty much always will have cold feet and they don’t warm up until the afternoon, and never can get a good fit in his boot. He purchased a pair of the skiing compression socks and made sure to write us a testimonial the next Monday, and told us that he did not have the same reaction. Feet were warm, he felt comfortable in his boots, felt refreshed at the end of the day. It’s nice to hear testimonials that folks are actually using the products and getting the results that they are intended to.
We also have cycling shorts, which are obviously there’s a lot of that going on out there, folks that are cycling, staying active. Again, we want to be able to be the place where they come to get the expertise they need and the products that they’re looking for. We are competitively priced, too.
Mike: Generally speaking, with cycle shorts or with any of these product garments, you can get them at a local sporting goods but they’re not compression. Graduated compression means that it’s tighter at the bottom and it gradually gets less compression as it goes up your body. A lot of the brand name products that are out there now are just one compression. They’re okay, but this is actually taking it a step further to the next step up and the next quality.
Dr. Lisa: This is something that in medicine we use all the time. After surgery we’ll use compression socks on a patient because we don’t want them to get a blood clot. Now they’re actually taking this information and they’re moving it from helping sick or post-surgical patients get well to, “Let’s help well people be even more well,” or help improve their performance as you’ve talked about.
Mike: I actually wear the … Most people think about compression socks, they think about their grandmother with the big seam going up the back and that, “Oh my goodness, I never want to wear that, have to wear that.” Well, from a general health standpoint it’s great for your legs. I’m still active. I’m in my early fifties and I still run, I still play sports. I’ll tell you, a day that I’m going to run I will always wear my compression socks beforehand. There’s a big difference in how great my legs feel during the run. They help your performance and they’re comfortable and now they’re even stylish, which is very important. You’ve got to make the colors match.
Dr. Lisa: I think that is really important. Because I know when I was pregnant quite a while ago they would have me wear these stockings to prevent swollen feet, because I was being a doctor and on my feet a lot. They were not stylish. They were not stylish stockings at all, and it really cut down on my clothing choices. I think for people who are wanting to … who are young and active and want to stay healthy, to have these sort of options available now is really great. What else do you have there?
Mike: We have carried bracing products all along, so thinking knee, ankle bracing, back brace, but what we’ve decided to do is up the quality level of the bracing that we carry. So many folks are looking for that brace that they want because their ACL is torn and they don’t want to get surgery or they can’t afford to get surgery. We have braces available for that type of injury that can support the knee, continue the activity. We have a gentleman that purchased a knee brace because he does not have an ACL and he continues to ski. He needs a high-end knee brace. We also we even have the knee braces for folks that stay active, they don’t have arthritis, they don’t have the ACL injury but it’s for prevention of that.
If you are playing basketball, you’re playing football or baseball, high impact potential sports where you could face an injury, this is helping to protect the ACL and other ligaments within the knee. We’ve gone from just more of a good brace to a good-better-best lineup, and we feel pretty happy about the quality of products that we have in the bracing department. Ankles is also a key joint that is frequently injured. The level of product available is somewhat limited in the low end, and so we’ve really got some nice new technology for ankle bracing that we are excited about also.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out about what you are doing at Premier Sports Health and Black Bear Medical?
Jim: We currently have everything on the blackbearmedical.com website. We do have a website in process specifically for Premier Sports Health, and it’ll be premiersportshealth.com where we will have all of our sports medicine products on there as well as a shopping cart. Folks that come in get measured for what they need, and if they want to buy recurring orders they will be able to do that right through our shopping cart.
We also are getting out there and promoting it through all different forms of media, making sure folks know that we are not serving just the elderly demographic now, we are opening up to a new younger demographic. Our brand is not just for stay-at-home products, it’s about getting out and being active. You will hear us on the radio, you will see us on TV, you will see us on the website, I’m sure print media you’ll see us out there.
You’re welcome to come in anytime, we’d love to show folks around the store. It’s very common when folks come in the store, they either don’t know about us because they haven’t needed our products or they only think of us as the elderly stay-at-home type products. It’s fun to bring people in the store and show them the new products.
Dr. Lisa: Your store is right off of Marginal Way?
Jim: Yeah, we’re located right next to World Gym on 275 Marginal Way. We also have a store in Bangor as well, that’s carrying these products. Then eventually we’re hoping to bring it down to our New Hampshire store and open up a retail location down there.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Mike Chapman who is the director of marketing and sales, and Jim Greatorex who is the president of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical. Thanks for coming in on our Father’s Day show and talking to us about the ways that we can use some of your products to stay healthy and be out there in the world.
Mike: Thanks for having us.
Jim: Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: There was a time that I spent about a four-year period of my life I spent in the desert, in the Sonoran Desert. I would fly out there three or four times a year and spend about a week with my shaman. I had a shaman at that time. He taught me how to see nature, he taught me everything that I wasn’t seeing. I’m going to read to you something out of “The Spell of the Sensuous” by David Abram. I think it’s very profound and speaks to us what a shaman really is and what a shaman actually does.
“The shaman acts as an intermediary between the human community in the larger ecological field, ensuring that there is an appropriate flow of nourishment not just from the landscape to the human inhabitants but from the human community back to the local earth. The relationship between human society and the larger society of beings is balanced and reciprocal.”
This is essentially what a shaman does, sort of a midwife I guess you might say between land and community. It’s important to know that we all have a little shaman in all of us, and be aware of that wisdom and that piece of us that really can understand and melt with nature, and understand nature. I’m Ted Carter, and if you’d like to contact me I can be reached at tedcarterdesign.com.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our program after acknowledging the following generous sponsors: Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedics Specialists in Falmouth, Maine. At Orthopedic Specialists ultrasound technology is taken to the highest degree. With state-of-the-art ultrasound equipment small areas of tendonitis, muscle and ligament tears, instability and arthritis conditions can be easily found during examination. For more information visit orthocareme.com or call (207) 781-9077.
Dr. Lisa: At the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we believe we are helping to build a better world with the help of many. We would like to bring to you people who are examples of those building a better world in the areas of wellness, health and fitness. To talk to you today about one of these, fitness, is Jim Greatorex, the president of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical. Here is Jim.
Jim: I want to invite you in to Black Bear Medical to see the latest new pain relief product out there called the LaserTouchOne. This is a two-minute device which works on muscle, tissue and nerve pain with tremendous results. After two minutes 93% of the people receive decreased pain and in some instances no pain. Come on in and see for yourself. I’m Jim Greatorex, president of Black Bear Medical. Come on in and see our trained staff down at 275 Marginal Way and at www.blackbearmedical.com.
Dr. Lisa: I really love the fact that here in Maine we have high quality or high caliber people trying to make sure that we keep our athletes in shape and also keep the people of Maine in shape, so that we are able to go out and enjoy healthy active lives. Two such individuals who are participating in this are Jared Buzzell who is the physical therapy manager at the OA Performance Center, and Stan Skolfield who is the manager of the Parisi Speed School also in the OA Performance Center.
I know you’re going to tell me a little bit about what the OA Performance Center and the OA Sports Center really are all about. Thanks for coming in and talking to me today. Let’s start with you, Stan. Tell me what is it that you do and what is the OA Performance Center?
Stan: The OA Performance Center was actually created as a way for OA Centers for Orthopedics to really round out their sports medicine continuum. OA Centers for Orthopedics, as you may or may not know, we are a one-stop shop when it comes to orthopedics and sports medicine. We have the ability to … If you need orthopedic care we have physicians for that, if you need surgery we have that, we have casting, bracing and MRI. We have sports physical therapy, but one of the things that we were lacking was a way to prevent those injuries from happening as well as a way to really help athletes reach the next level. A few years back we decided, “Hey, let’s open up this sports center to really address some of the injury prevention needs, some of the youth obesity problem going on in a way that really bring athletes to a higher level.” I actually run the performance part of that center.
Dr. Lisa: Jared, what do you do over at the OA Sports Center?
Jared: I am the manager of physical therapy center within the sports complex. We see a wide gamut of patients, from the very young, five, six, seven-year-old athletes just getting into sports, all the way through adults. It’s not just your typical what you think of an athlete as. Yes we’re seeing high caliber college professional athletes, but we’re also seeing the everyday walker that just wants to get out there, wants to pick their grandchild up and may have a sore shoulder and can’t do that. We have a broad gamut of clientele that we see, and so I manage the staff there. We have six therapists within that building. I also have a pretty … stay pretty involved in treating as well, within the building.
Dr. Lisa: You both come at athletic performance from a slightly different angle. Stan, you have a background as an athletic trainer. Jared, you have a background in physical therapy. What are the differences between those two fields and what are the similarities?
Jared: Physical therapy and athlete trainers work very closely together in the profession. In the state of Maine, physical therapists typically are the ones that will in a clinic-type setting do the evaluation and set the treatment plan. Whereas athletic trainers, they can be very well versed in evaluative techniques, they can carry out those treatment plans, and a lot of times the athletic trainers are more kind of the first responders with injury. They may be on the field during initial injury and whatnot.
Stan: The best way I describe it is usually an athletic trainer like myself, I deal with everything from emergency on-field management of an injury, to the prevention of injury, to assessments where I’m going to help them, weave them through the medical system, who do you need to see for a physician if you need to see one, help coordinate their rehabilitation, all the way to preventing the injury, maybe some nutrition, all the way up to the performance aspect.
The physical therapists, they’re more specialized. When somebody needs some specialized rehabilitation, that’s where they’re the experts. I’m a little bit more of a broad spectrum, but these guys really dive down into, “Hey, here’s what they need to do to get back from their injury.”
Dr. Lisa: Stan, you’ve worked not only with the University of Southern Maine but also with the Boston Red Sox organization. Now you’ve come back to something which I think is more of the common person. What sort of prompted that decision to go back to really be more, I don’t know, in the weeds with this?
Stan: Like you said, I’ve worked at a number of different levels. I’ve worked from the professional athlete, all the way to collegiate, all the way to the high school setting. One of the things I’ve realized over the years being the athletic trainer is obviously getting into what I really enjoy helping people. While the professional athlete, everybody sees that, hey that’s the really sexy thing to do, but the most rewarding thing is actually just working with your everyday common athlete.
Some conversations I’ve had with different athletes, I think one of the biggest gifts that you can give somebody is to help their child either overcome an injury or actually take them from somebody who’s not really not that great of an athlete to all of a sudden that kid is going from riding the bench to now they’re making varsity. Just the feeling and the reward you get from seeing them accomplish that, that’s what makes me happy. That’s why I think I’ve really gone into the field and in this performance center.
Dr. Lisa: What would you offer to parents as far as perspective when it comes to this, “Let’s start the kids early, let’s get them in on there…” This Malcolm Gladwell’s idea of having to have 10,000 hours to be amazing by the time you’re 20. What can you offer as perspective?
Stan: That book is kind of a double-edged sword I like to say, because while that book says one thing, a lot of the evidence if you really read into the research actually contradicts that. One of the things that I say to parents is that for every Tiger Wood you see out there there’s 100 kids that didn’t make that, that are really upset with their parents that they actually pushed them and drove them and made them do all those golf lessons or really pushed them to stay with one sport. They’re totally burned out by the time they’re 16, 17 years old and they want nothing to do with it.
Be very careful with that. Make sure you allow these kids, expose them to different sports. We know just from the research that some of the best athletes… and if you remember when you were growing up, some of the best athletes in your school, they weren’t just great at one sport. They were great at two or three sports.
Let’s not forget Tom Brady. Tom Brady is a great football player, but he was at Michigan State for a baseball scholarship too. Michael Jordan, not just a great basketball player, good golfer and played a little baseball. Remember when it comes to being a great athlete, just don’t specialize in a singular sport too early because you’ll burn those kids out.
Dr. Lisa: It’s interesting to me that we have the OA Performance Center and the Sports Center here in Saco, Maine. We’re really interested in helping people perform at the highest level possible, whether that’s as an athlete or whether just as an individual. Why is it so important to have this here in Maine?
Jared: I think location, where we … when we looked around and saw where there was a need for this, the location really worked in regards to OA’s mission. Our home office is here in Portland on Sewall Street. We have physical therapy, we have physician services, we have a surgery center, MRI, X-ray, all that. Then we tried to really reach out. Saco was our first satellite clinic basically. As Stan mentioned earlier, this is where we really wanted to encompass that performance aspect that we were missing.
Having it there lets us reach out to the athletes in the Southern Maine area, still get athletes from the greater Portland area. We have athletes that come up from New Hampshire to train at the center. We’ve seen some folks travel from New Hampshire, Massachusetts to have physical therapy with us. It lets us reach out to those athletes or that population.
We’ve also since opened sites in Windham and in Brunswick. We don’t have that performance model at those sites, but same thing. Our goal was reach to the south, reach to the west, reach to the north so that it would make it easier access for folks that get injured and need help.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate all that you’re doing, as the mother of three children who do three seasons worth of sports and one who is in college now and has made it through in a healthy way. Also as a runner myself I know how important it is that this prevention aspect and the high performance aspect is being brought to the state of Maine.
We’ve been speaking with Jared Buzzell who is the Physical Therapy Manager at the OA Performance Center and Stan Skolfield who is the manager of the Parisi Speed School at the OA Performance Center. Thank you so much for all the work you’re doing and for coming in and talking to us today.
Stan: Thanks for having us.
Jared: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 92, Sports Medicine, airing on Father’s Day. Our guests have included Dr. John Herzog, Jim Greatorex and Mike Chapman, Jared Buzzell and Stan Skolfield. For more information on our guests visit doctorlisa.org. For more information on the events I mentioned earlier, the 2013 Taste of the Nation or the Maine Home and Design Show, visit the mainemag.com. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes.
For a preview of this week’s show signup for our e-newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest, and read my take on health and wellbeing on the Bountiful blog. We’d love to hear from you, so please let us what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
Also let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that you’ve enjoyed our show on sports medicine. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day and happy Father’s Day and all fathers and father figures out there. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine; Marci Booth of Booth Maine; Apothecary by Design; Premier Sports House, a division of Black Bear Medical; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedics Specialists; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage; Ted Carter of Inspired Landscapes; and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street in Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet. Become a subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes, see the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details. Summaries of all of our past shows can be found at doctorlisa.com.