Years of Wear and Tear Lead to ‘Boomeritis’

They’d track him down on the treadmill, ease up to him at the elliptical trainer and wait for him at the weight bench.

“I couldn’t get through a workout at the gym without someone coming up to me to say, ‘Hey, Doc, I’ve got this pain,’ ” recalls Nicholas DiNubile, a Philadelphia orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine expert who consults for the ‘76ers basketball team and the Pennsylvania Ballet.

Most of these ailing exercisers were baby boomers and virtually all suffered from similar problems.

“It was all the ‘itises’--tendinitis, bursitis, arthritis,” DiNubile says. “Plus, they had a kind of ‘fix-me-itis’ attitude that wouldn’t accept anything wrong.”

A boomer himself, with a bad knee from an old football injury, DiNubile says: “It suddenly hit me that we’re seeing a new phenomenon here. We’re living much longer than ever before, and we’re playing serious sports at an age when our parents would have just packed it in.”

DiNubile dubbed the condition “boomeritis”--an ailment caused partly by years of athletic wear and tear and partly from age-related changes that cause tissue to become more susceptible to injury. When he looked for data to support his theory, he found that the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported a 33% increase in the number of adults 35 to 54 who were treated in hospital emergency rooms for sports-related injuries from 1991 to 1998.

“An estimated 1 million baby boomers suffered medically attended sports-related injuries in 1998, costing the nation more than $18 billion,” says commission Chairwoman Ann Brown. Although some of this increase comes from the growing population in this age group, Brown says much of the rise comes from boomers “feeling invulnerable” and failing to take proper safety precautions.

The most common injuries were sprains and strains in the shoulder, knee and ankle.

These figures may represent just a small segment of the “boomeritis” problem, since they account for only those injuries serious enough to require emergency room treatment. There is no data on the number of sports-related injuries treated in physicians’ offices or through self-care.

But the solution isn’t to stop exercising.

“The harm you’ll do to yourself by being sedentary is even greater,” Brown notes. “Our message is to take the proper precautions, so you can exercise successfully through old age.”

Some of these precautions are obvious: Always take time to warm up and stretch, wear appropriate protective gear and don’t be a weekend warrior who compresses all your exercise into one or two days. But many of the most critical injury-prevention strategies are less well-known.

“You’ve got to get in shape to play your sport, not play your sport to get in shape,” says Robert Nirschl, director of the Nirschl Orthopedic Sports Medicine Clinic in Arlington, Va. This means doing appropriate strengthening, stretching and aerobic exercises geared to help you play your sport safely and reach your performance goals.

“Most sports injuries in the boomer group are mileage problems that build up over time,” Nirschl says. “The body changes as a result of the demands imposed by a sport, and this can create imbalances that must be addressed.”

For example, he says, running causes tightness in the calf muscles, tightness and shortness in the Achilles’ tendons and weakness in the shins. Younger runners might get away with these imbalances, but gradually, older runners who don’t do exercises to improve flexibility and to strengthen their shins are setting themselves up for injury.

Other strategies to prevent boomeritis include:

* Cross-train. Alternate activities to achieve a well-rounded workout and avoid overusing particular body parts. For example, alternate running with swimming or bicycling.

* Be sure your program includes the “three pillars of fitness”--cardiovascular, strength and flexibility exercises.

* Remember that more isn’t always better. Give your body a chance to recover from a hard workout by doing an easy workout the next day.

* Pay attention to pain, especially if it occurs in joints or on only one side of the body. Seek advice from a sports medicine professional.

* Get lessons. Many injuries arise from faulty technique.

* Be sure your equipment is in good shape. Shoes should be replaced every 400 to 600 miles.

* Check your ego at the gym door. Don’t sacrifice good form in trying to lift the same amount of weight you did at age 20. Use lighter weights with good technique.

* Pay special attention to stretching the four areas most prone to tightness in adults: calves, hamstrings, lower back and front of shoulders.

* Give it a rest. Take a day off once a week and do only light activity such as gardening, yard work or walking.

If you do get injured, recognize that recovery “is going to require work,” says orthopedist Nirschl.

“You’ll need to revitalize the devitalized tissue, which means doing rehabilitation exercises designed to restore strength, endurance and flexibility,” he says. “Rest is contrary to those goals because it invites atrophy and weakness.” Consult a physical therapist for appropriate rehabilitative exercises.

Remember, too, Nirschl says, that “heredity plays a role in boomeritis. Some people are born with 10,000-mile tires, and some people are born with 60,000-mile tires. If you train smart, you can maximize what you have.”