Health & Safety

Sweating results in the loss of both electrolytes (particularly sodium) and water. Orange juice, moderate salting of food in the diet, and sports drinks help replace electrolytes such as sodium, potassium, and chloride lost during sports. 

Surprising, as it may seem, the most important part of an athlete's diet isn't what they eat, it is what and how much they drink. Drinking fluids before, during and after sports is especially important for preadolescent children because they have special fluid needs compared to adults, or even teenagers. As a parent or coach, you are responsible for taking precautions to prevent heat illnesses in exercising children and making sure they drink enough fluids.

To prevent dehydration, or, worse yet, heat illness, you should encourage your child to drink cool fluids, preferably sports drinks, before, during, and after physical activity.

You've heard the old saying that the human body needs 8 glasses of water a day to stay healthy. Did you know that was a myth? In fact, it is one of the biggest pop medical myths of our time. No one is quite sure where it came from and no scientist to date has been able to prove that 8 is the number.

Each year, almost 87,000 hockey-related injuries to youths under age 15 are treated in hospitals, doctors' offices, clinics, ambulatory surgery centers and hospital emergency rooms. The total cost of these hockey-related injuries was more than $978 million in 2006. This amount includes medical, legal and liability, work loss, and pain and suffering costs.

Here are answers to the most frequently asked questions about automatic external defibrillators (AEDs).

There are fourteen steps to starting and running an AED program in your community.

Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) are lightweight, portable, computerized, battery-operated devices used to restore a regular heartbeat after sudden cardiac arrest (SCA).

Allowing a sports injury to heal is only the first of six steps in the recovery process a child should complete in rehabilitation and treatment before returning to play, experts say.

A number of studies in recent years have shown that sports drinks re-hydrate kids who are active in the heat better than water. Given a choice, kids will drink a lot more of a sports drink than of a glass of water. An oft-cited 1999 study in the Journal of Applied Physiology reported that drinking a properly formulated sports drink with carbohydrates and electrolytes (sodium and potassium) increased fluid intake by nearly one-third (32%) compared to water. Because they taste better than water, sports drinks encouraged kids to keep drinking until their fluid needs were met.