Sports and healing:
New center at CU blends sports, healing
On any given day, on the second floor of the new University of Colorado Sports Medicine and Performance Center in Boulder, an elite cyclist is pedaling furiously in the biomechanics lab as his lactate production is measured. Nearby, a 50-year-old man learns to walk again.
On any given day, on the second floor of the new University of Colorado Sports Medicine and Performance Center, an elite cyclist is pedaling furiously in the biomechanics lab as his lactate production is measured.
A few steps away, a 50year-old man prepares to submerse himself in a swim flume, learning to walk again after shattering his pelvis.
In the gym on the other side of the corridor, ice dancers, gymnasts and skaters are working with physical therapists who are experts in helping high mobility performers heal from injuries and learn not to repeat them.
This integrated approach to sports performance and healing is seen more commonly in Europe than the U.S. and, until now, not at all in Colorado.
Up and running
Housed on the CU campus in the Champions Center at Folsom Field, the clinic is a unique undertaking involving Boulder Community Health and University Physicians Inc., an administrative entity that serves the CU School of Medicine.
It’s been up and running — or cycling or swimming — since August.
“Historically, Boulder Community Health had a sports medicine department, and simultaneously, the CU School of Medicine had its facility as well,” said executive director Eric Medved.
With each of the entities now working side by side, Medved said, “We’re creating a culture so there is great dialogue and an easy handoff between disciplines.”
During the two years or so the center was being planned, sports physiologist Inigo San Millan traveled to London, San Francisco and the Mayo Clinic facility in Minneapolis to gather ideas from similar facilities.
“This is not a new concept,” Millan said. But it is an opportunity to meld the deep knowledge of endurance sports embedded in Boulder’s DNA with medicine.
Millan has done extensive research in chronic disease, such as Type I and Type II diabetes, and he continues to delve deep into cellular metabolism to better understand why some humans succumb to chronic disease and others do not.
“We’ve been very successful with elite athletes,” he said. “Now we can do the same with people suffering from chronic diseases. Elite athletes, for instance, are the gold standard for perfect metabolism, yet they consume almost endless quantities of things that are bad for most of us — simple sugars and carbohydrates. Why are they protected?”
Understanding the finely tuned, flawless metabolism of such athletes will help unravel the mysteries of metabolic dysfunctions that underlie disease, he said.
“We can’t understand imperfection unless we understand perfection,” Millan said.
Dr. Eric McCarty has spent countless hours on the CU campus — first as an undergraduate and football player and now as team physician and orthopedic specialist.
“We see everyone here,” McCarty said. “We have amateurs who come in who say, ‘Hey, I want to ride my bike faster,’ to student and professional athletes. It’s unique. I don’t know of another football stadium with an MRI beneath the stands.”
Use of facility
The 27,000-square-foot center has a staff of about 75, including 11 physicians and physician assistants, 20 physical therapists, three massage therapists and eight community-based athletic trainers. Their hope is that the facility is used as much by student and professional athletes as it is by the community.
Dr. Sherri Ballantine, for instance, specializes in the treatment of head injuries and concussions. In her work with young people, teaching them to manage injuries and to recover function, she practices alongside a team of physical therapists, who oversee her patients during rehab.
Thanks to her research and interest in community outreach, the center now has a partnership with the Boulder Valley School District to develop protocols for reducing the incidence of concussions and educating teachers to spot them when they occur in students.
“The idea is to get kids back to school faster and better,” she said.
Ballantine and the physicial therapists are also pioneering techniques to treat performance artists such as dancers and skaters.
“The challenge with performance artists is that a lot of them have significant mobility,” said Pam Andringa, a physical therapist, “but that also sets them up for significant injury.”
Even as the injured come here to recover and rehab, the most fun may occur in the biomechanics and human performance labs, where professional athletes and amateurs toil together to improve their performance.
At work at a long bench housing an intriguing array of instruments, cycling biomechanist Charles Van Atta uses 3-D imaging to custom fit bikes, seats and pedals. On a recent morning in the lab, cyclist Glenn McCoin is stepping carefully off a stationary racing bike. Asked whether he is a serious cyclist, McCoin pauses before saying, “Serious enough to be here.”