We have a fun conversation about how Pickleball is fast becoming the #1 sport for the senior crowd and its driving a huge amount of injuries that are causing a great influx of orthopedic visits.
We have a fun conversation about how Pickleball is fast becoming the #1 sport for the senior crowd and its driving a huge amount of injuries that are causing a great influx of orthopedic visits.
Well , your bone connected to you . Foot bone . Your foot bone connected to you , heal bone , you heel bone connected to you ankle, bone your
Speaker 2:Ankle. Hello and welcome to the Bone and Joint Playbook with Dr. John sst . Tips for pain-free aging. Dr . John SST is a board certified orthopedic surgeon with over 35 years experience in the Dayton, Ohio area. He is also a clinical fellowship trained surgeon in total joint replacement from Harvard. This episode is brought to you by
Speaker 3:Ted's authentic Greek salad dressing and marinade. It's healthy gluten-free and delicious. You can find ted's in Dayton, Ohio at Dorothy Lane Markets Health Foods unlimited and DOT's markets. That's Ted's authentic Greek dressing and marinade. Thanks Ted.
Speaker 4:Alright . You know what it is? It's another addition of the Bone and Joint Playbook with Dr. John Erst . This is our Christmas edition and I want you to listen to this. You know what that is? Dr. John sst . Tell 'em what that is.
Speaker 5:Well, it sure sounds like a pickleball against a pickleball paddle.
Speaker 4:And what's our topic today?
Speaker 5:Well, Terry , our topic today is pickleball. Pickleball , an injury creation machine.
Speaker 4:<laugh> an injury creation machine. Now I am a pickleball fan. I play pickleball and I will tell you it is a great source of back strains and all kinds of stuff that we're gonna get into. But because this is our Christmas edition, we're gonna have some fun today and talk a little bit about pickleball, where it came from and all that kind of stuff. So before we do that, why don't we describe to the folks what pickleball is if they're not aware, but I'm sure they are.
Speaker 5:Well, yeah. I mean, pickle ball's basically just a, a paddle or racket sport that you can play with two, which is singles or four people that would be a doubles match. And it's much like tennis, except you have a hollow plastic wiffle ball. It's hard
Speaker 4:Sticker plastic's sticker . Yeah, a sticker. I'm standing right here .
Speaker 5:It's sticker . It can have varying amounts of holes, believe it or not, 26 or 40. And if you're counting the holes on your pickleball right now, that means you're obsessive compulsive <laugh> . There's a , there's a net that's about 34 inches high. Right. And you , um, you over the , over the pond it's uh , 0.86 meters. Um , and that net is what you hit the ball over. There have to be a couple bounces , uh, before play really finalizes on each point. So it's much like tennis. One team serves. You can only score when you're serving and you hit the ball over the net, it then comes back and then after that it's just a tennis match till somebody makes a fault or the ball gets knocked out of bounds, you hit the net, you , um, make an error or a fault they call it. And then the point is over, if you served, you get a point and then the score is added up and somebody wins. And don't forget, somebody loses.
Speaker 4:Alright. And , and kind of the demographics for pickleball is , uh, are people like me, people, you know, 55 and above seems to be a very popular sport because it's like tennis, but slower and there is some something satisfying about hitting that ball, the sound it makes. Right. And you were telling me earlier that some cities are having some issues with sound and , and causing some frustration with people living around a pickleball court. Correct?
Speaker 5:Well, and you heard the little , uh, quasi obnoxious sound you were making with the pickleball hitting <laugh> . So imagine having a house next to a couple pickleball courts that are going till 10 or 11 every night. So there are, there are true cases of people who have filed , uh, lawsuits against cities and municipalities because of the noise that pickleball courts generate. And then they've perhaps not won , but they've certainly had some of the times limited on how late they play in the day. Uh , but they certainly are , um, noisy. It's a noisy sport. Oh, sure. So there are some newer technology pickleball paddles that are gonna dampen the noise somewhat, which may help the people around them . I think the people, like you said, who play, maybe they like get the feedback of hitting that ball and Right. You know, like boxing, you get to hit something pretty hard and get some , uh, get some gratification outta that. So
Speaker 4:Let's talk , uh, uh, kind of is because you're an orthopedic surgeon, right?
Speaker 5:That's why this is a injury creation dream come true injury creation for us , because we have this, as you said, this is really , uh, you know, one of the articles we're gonna talk about later said, pickleball is growing rapidly with a passionate senior following. And honestly, as people get a little older and the pace of their sports needs to slow down a little, they don't really wanna , um, maybe run marathons, but they might wanna play some doubles tennis or a slower paced sport. And pickleball has a smaller court, right? It doesn't require as much movement. Right. And it maintains activity. And, and probably one of the best things as you get older is to maintain social interactions, contacts with other people. We talk about , uh, these blue zones and where people live longer. And one of the biggest things on longevity is actually staying socially interactive with others and not being, you know, sequestered in a, in a room reading, you know , uh, Russian novels where you are not socially interactive. Right? So this is a , it's a , usually a group sport. Um, there's usually always a , a little food or drink before or after that , uh, can be part of the experience of pickleball. And in the United States, we have 150 new pickleball courts opening every week. Every
Speaker 4:Week are , now are these, do you know , I don't know if you know, are they inside or outside courts? Are they just
Speaker 5:Well, they're both and we're gonna talk about that because when we talk later about injuries, we're also gonna talk about prevention and what you can do to avoid some of the injuries. So you wanna say, well, am I playing indoors on a wooden court much like a basketball court? Yeah. Or my outdoors on concrete. There are also clay courts. If you are a tennis pro, you know, the , um, French open is played on clay. So clay is a much slower surface, but the footwear needs to be more like a , a light tennis or bowling shoe , uh, versus what you might wear on concrete outside or on a, like a basketball shoe, maybe on a indoor court. So your courts are indoors or outdoors. That will affect , uh, sometimes the wind will be a , a factor outside. So the playing surface and obviously the sun rain and the elements. Alright ,
Speaker 4:So for all those interns and residents out there, you call this an injury creation machine. Have you noticed an uptick in patients , uh, with injuries resulting from pickleball in the past five years?
Speaker 5:Um, that would be an absolutely <laugh> , and and that's because more people are doing it and more outta shape and older folks are doing it. I don't see them doing a lot of yoga and stretching beforehand. Right. Um, I think people then also, and we'll talk a little bit about staying in your lane, saying, well, why am I playing pickleball? Am I going to be the national champ and I'm gonna dive for every ball so that I can't possibly lose a game? Or am I going out to have fun? I mean, my partner might be my spouse, right ? It may be it is for me. Yeah , some , yeah. And so it may be that this is fun, but I mean, we don't need to collide. I mean, it something as simple as having a stra like a little rope around the base of your racket. Like we use those in racketball so that when you swing, the racket doesn't slip outta your hand and hit your partner. I mean, so a safety rope around your wrist is a great idea. Um, if your paddle ball racket doesn't have that, or your , I'm sorry, your pickleball racket. So, you know, there are safety features that can make it easy. But you also have to have a mindset to say, I'm not here to dive for every ball. The, the, the numbers we may present later have to do with emergency room visits where people literally fall on their wrist. And since we brought it up, probably the more common injuries are , uh, broken into upper and lower extremity. So if we just say lower extremity twisting your ankle, ankle sprains. Yep . Pulling a absolutely a calf muscle or a hamstring muscle. And a lot of these, again, aren't gonna go to the emergency room. So you're gonna, you're gonna pull a muscle in your calf, you're gonna pull up limp and say, I don't know, I feel like I got shot by somebody on a grassy knoll. And guess what? There's a shooter and you just pulled a hamstringing muscle and you can't walk. And that thing's gonna bleed and hurt. And the , the , the correct way to treat that is to rest it, put some compression on it and don't stretch it. Although people wanna stretch it.
Speaker 4:For me it was back, right? Yeah . I twisted my back. But
Speaker 5:Whatever it is, you may not go to the emergency room for that. I did . Correct . So the numbers that I show you that may show 20,000 visits a year, probably underestimate the number of pickleball injuries. So much like that, that that ankle sprain or that muscle pull , you're basically telling the people you're with may not be at for a few weeks because I can't really walk very well. I'm certainly not playing more pickleball right now. So we want to think about those as lower extremity injuries. There are people that obviously get just simple things like abrasions, like you land on your knees. Oh yeah . Coffee . So maybe you wear a knee pad , right? Um , simple. So scrapes and abrasions or a nuisance. But like when you fall on your, I talk about the upper extremity now you fall , uh, we call the acronym of foosh , which is , uh, F-O-O-S-H. It's a fall on an outstretched hand. Our natural instincts when we fall is to put our hand out . Well, that's why wrist fractures and what's called the distal radius. We talked a little bit about that with kids with Dr. Melman, if you remember right, the wrist fractures are the most common injury in the upper extremity. And a fracture that's a broken bone, now you're having a plate and little screws put on because your wrist is crumbled and you're not gonna be playing pickleball for a while from that. So you can have fractures, you can have sprains, much like tennis elbow , um, can come from tennis. Certainly pickleball rackets can come from , uh, repetitive microtrauma to the elbow. Uh, one thing we do for people with elbow pain, like either tennis or what's called bowler's elbow, which is kind of an inside elbow problem as opposed to the outside where tennis elbow , uh, patients have soreness, we tell you, you can increase the size of your handle on your racket and getting a bigger , uh, grip actually takes a little force off your elbow. There are some wrist splints we recommend you try. A wrist splint will keep you if you fall from, you know , the wrist.
Speaker 4:So you're saying wear these when you're playing?
Speaker 5:You can, yeah. And , and again, there may be some difficulty where you're hitting your rack, hitting with your racket , uh, using a wrist splint. But if you wanna protect against a fall, maybe you put it on the opposite hand only, but you know, you might play with it if you can wear two. If you said, I wanna , I mean, if you think about a , a , a person who does roller blades or skateboards, I mean, they basically tell you put the knee pads and wrist splints on. Uh, you know, we're not at the point where we're wearing helmets for pickleball yet. But, you know, if you wanna protect something, I mean you need it . Prevention means before you do it. Right. So you,
Speaker 4:So , so if you look at like kids sports, soccer and football, that right? That's a large portion of their injuries comes from those sports. Are you, are you saying kind of pickleball is the equivalent for the older adults? Now we're seeing that's what's causing most of these sports injuries is pickleball.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think it's a couple things. I think number one, we're not in as good a shape as the , uh, the adolescents Sure . That we're mimicking speak for yourself. Yeah . And trying to restore our youth. Right. But , um, I think we may not properly stretch beforehand. We may not , uh, properly stretch after hand . Honestly, there's arguments about stretching that say you shouldn't stretch your achilles before you play, because then all the force goes to your muscle. If you have some of that , uh, tight is still in your Achilles, then the forces go through the tendon of the, the Achilles. If you feel that ropey thing behind your ankle, right? That's your achilles tendon. So some people say if you just go out and play, you don't need to do a lot of stretching, but maybe afterwards that you've warmed up, when you get done, that's when you stretch and the muscle strengthen the , uh, the tendons lengthen a little. We talked a lot about the foot and ankle docs that were here on that podcast about stretching your Achilles three minutes, three times a day, just dropping your heel off a stairwell or one of these one stretch devices. You can go to one stretch.com. That's a shout out to Dr. Amos and his , uh, Achilles stretching device. But these are useful things for maintaining your ability to play and preventing future injuries. And again , um, when you're diving for a pickleball, you can jam your wrist, you can jam your elbow, you can crack your shoulder, you can slip your shoulder outta place. We see a lot of injuries in this age group because normally you're not gonna see a 62-year-old person get injured playing golf. I mean, they may get a sore back from swinging hard and a bad sand trap lie. Right . But let's face it, I mean, this is much more , um, of a challenge to the system. They say then , um, some of the things, even bowling is really not gonna give you too many. Yeah.
Speaker 4:But you , you know , terribles , you know , the problem is I don't think people realize , maybe they realize it, and I'm just now coming to understand it, is when you're playing pickleball and the ball's coming at you, you're not thinking like a 62-year-old. Right. You're thinking like an 18-year-old, you're thinking, I can get that ball. You're , you're not, your mind's not reacting like, oh, I should not try to get that ball. 'cause I'm 62, you're saying I can get it. And that's how you get hurt. And
Speaker 5:Again, there's a little bit too though, and I , I mean I still play some baseball. So when I have gotten older, I've decided that that that foul ball that I used to be able to run and , and I would just slam into the fence to catch it. I'm like, yeah , it's a foul ball. <laugh> . I'm not gonna kill myself for that foul ball. I'm in a , I'm in an older league now. Uh , it's still fun to play baseball, but there's a couple things I've just gotten smarter about. So like in the age group, injury categories, it's interesting, men who are senior men now we're talking about a senior group, maybe over 60. Those folks have about a three times greater chance of getting a sprain or a strain. And there's a difference between a sprain and a strain. The easy way to remember it is that a strain has the word train in it. Trains have ven engines, engines have heat coming out right from the steam engine. And you can put warmth on a calf muscle or a back muscle that hurts. But a sprain is a wrenching of a ligament. Or sprain has the word rain . So you want cold on a sprain, like you sprain your ankle or you sprain your knee. You don't want heat to draw
Speaker 4:More blood. Don't . How do I the normal guy in interval , I don't know which one's which. You
Speaker 5:Can tell your knee from your calf. Can't you put your hand on your kneecap? Oh boy. Here we go . The test . That's your knee. Yeah. <laugh>. Now reach halfway down to the ankle. That muscle in the back. That's a muscle. But how do ,
Speaker 4:That's a sprained well hurts . How do I know a strained or sprained? It
Speaker 5:Hurts . Well, one's in a muscle, one's in a joint <laugh> .
Speaker 4:But how do I know that? I don't know that
Speaker 5:Where it hurts. Okay. Yeah . So remember, because start over. Number one, you're touching your knee cap . That's your knee, that's a joint. Yeah . Your knee bends and straightens, that's a joint. Muscles connect the joints. So in the middle, like your thigh, your calf, right? Those are your muscles. That's where you're gonna sprain . Uh , strain something. This is a
Speaker 4:Christmas edition .
Speaker 5:This is, yes . Santa's not being nice. I'll be nice. So, but, but a woman actually in that age group has a higher risk of a fracture. And there may be some components of osteoporosis with women that are more common in men. We know there's hormone changes, there are differences in bone density in men and women, right? And therefore, we could do a whole podcast on osteoporosis and, and how that may start much younger in women. Women have , um, hormone issues. Some of them have eating disorders. Some are on , you know, drastic weight reduction, ballet , uh, dancers. Uh, people who are gymnasts, they have strict coaches who don't let them gain weight. They never gain enough body mass because they're trying to keep their weight down, right? Their bones don't form. Um, we know there's hormonal changes with , uh, onset of menopause. We know that, that the bone makeup between men and women is different. But there are, there are tests for that called bone density tests. So if you said, why do women get more a three times greater risk of a fracture than a sprain or a strain, it's because probably their bones are a little less, less dense or strong. And, you know , um, a woman's probably nine times more likely to break a wrist with a fall than a man would. Wow. And it's just a numbers game. So , um, there's actually, if you look at all the injuries in pickleball, men and women are pretty equal. If you take all injuries, it's just, it's sprains and strains. Maybe karma and men, maybe they dive for balls more, or maybe women just land on their wrist wrong. But , um, there are registries from emergency rooms of pickleball injuries. And you're , and these are a lot of injuries. So the , um, the thing that's gonna happen is we wanna age, but we wanna , we don't wanna get ourselves into a need for surgery. So we wanna look at, you know, try to use good shoe wear . We want to use That's good point. Perhaps a wrist splint. Right? Um , as a protective thing. Just like a think of the kids on, on skateboards. I mean, you know, it's not going fast on a skateboard. That's hard to do. It's stopping, right? <laugh> like, yeah, I mean, I'm going, it's like skiing. I'm going pretty fast down the hill. <laugh> , I think you should realize there's a couple trees up there. So, you know , um, I don't think, like I said, I don't think we're at the helmet point yet, but , um, I will tell you a little bit about why this pickleball thing all started. Alright ? And I'll bet nobody knows that the person who invented it ended up in the US Senate and he was a politician. So in a little island off of Seattle, in the state of Washington, a guy developed a backyard children's game. And this sport basically evolved to be called pickleball. And there's a couple, oh , why
Speaker 4:Hasn't they called Pickleball? Does do we know that?
Speaker 5:Well, there's a couple, couple different stories. And , uh, this was the Pritchard family. I'll give , um, I'll give Joel Pritchard kudos for being the guy who invented it. Although a couple of his buddies came up with some rules and some of that. But , um, there was a couple ideas. One is that you're hitting the ball and you're putting, like his wife felt, you're putting the other team in a pickle when you hit the ball where they can't get it. And then there was, apparently their dog was named Pickle. I buy that one . And there was supposed to be a , uh, believe it or not, I'm not much of a crew person, right ? Where they, they pick teams to row. And I guess if you don't get picked, those people go in a pickle boat . They're the leftovers. They're the, like, you know, the last kids picked for pickup baseball or football. You know, you go, I'll take him, you take her. Uh , you know, and then the last five kids are the leftovers. Okay, well, they gotta be on somebody's team. Well, the people who weren't picked initially to be in the best boats for crew were put in a pickle boat and they were like leftovers. And somehow Pickle boat was harder to figure out than pickleball. And the lady thought, I'll name it after my dog.
Speaker 4:I'm going with that one . There's people , I'm going the dog,
Speaker 5:There's people , but the then the guy, if you talk to the people from the Pritchard family, yeah. These te these are like testimonials of history. So this is, by the way, like 1950. If
Speaker 4:You spent time listening to the Pritchard family talk about this. We got , we got another
Speaker 5:Conversation. I'm checking the name. Okay. I'm trying to get you the right data here. <laugh> . So this was back in like 1959. Okay? So now in the early sixties, they basically said, the historians in their family said the dog was born after the game was invented. So probably wasn't, but the name may have been changed 'cause of the dog, but it may not have been named initially. That, that's about all I'm gonna do on that. Alright ,
Speaker 4:Well,
Speaker 5:Okay. So the bottom line is it really has evolved though. There is a national association of pickleball players .
Speaker 4:Can you make money? Is this a sport where people make money?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. And that , that's a topic we thought we'd dig into. There are , um, profits to be made in pickleball. Ask your local sporting goods store. Who is selling you now? A pair of shoes. Wrist splint, ankle braces, paddle ball , uh, pickleball paddles, wiffle balls. Oh, I'm
Speaker 4:Not talking about that. I can on the pickleball .
Speaker 5:And then there are professionals, professional leagues. There are famous investors. We'll drop a few names. LeBron James, drew Brees . John McEnroe has his own line of , uh, pickleball paddles, which are, you know, shaped a certain way. Maybe they dampen the noise a little. Everybody's got a , you know, a better mousetrap reminds
Speaker 4:Me of that scene from Forrest Gump
Speaker 5:Where he is holding up the , we were, we tried, by the way, to get John on this , uh, podcast. And , uh, he didn't call us back. He didn't . But there is an amateur pickleball association. The SAPA started in the eighties. And there are, there are just professional leagues and you know, you're now up to almost 20 million people who are , uh, have played it probably closer to five or 10 who regularly play. And again, there's over like 12,000 courts in the United States. Yeah . We're
Speaker 4:Converting tennis courts
Speaker 5:To pickleball courts. Yeah . And I have a friend who just in , in our , one of our little local , uh, suburbs at Springboro, they took one of the soccer fields out and put in a bunch of pickle balls, good pickleball courts. And my, my buddy who played soccer wasn't very happy, but you'd probably get a few more people playing later in life, right? If you play pickleball.
Speaker 4:Right . So what if we're having to land this podcast and have some takeaways, what are the takeaways we wanna leave these folks with about pickleball a it is safe, but if you gotta do it correct. Is that right? Sure.
Speaker 5:And I think, can someone get hurt? The answer is absolutely. So stay in your lane, right? Try to keep your , um, witts about you. If it's not the national championship for you to have to win this point and the ball's, you know, right in the corner, maybe don't die for it . Don't die.
Speaker 4:That's the lesson . Don't die.
Speaker 5:Nice shot. Yeah . You know, try not to collide with your partner there . You need to communicate with a doubles partner. Like, I'm gonna hit this. You hit that right now. There's initially , uh, in the rules, I believe you, you, when you serve , uh, then there has to be two shots. There are two bounces on each one on each side. And then it's whoever wants to hit it can hit it. But there has to be some communication. We play. I've played doubles racketball for a long time and you can, you can hit someone pretty hard with the racket. Oh yeah. You could probably hit somebody pretty hard with a , with the , with the wiffle ball too. But hopefully they're on the other side. And you gotta remember if you're, if you're playing a 80-year-old grandmother and you're hitting the, the , the , the whiffle ball at her, I mean, you're not trying to like knock her eyes out, right? I mean, honestly, I don't think goggles are a horrible idea. You know, if you've ever seen what anything like , if you wanna just see how to injure your eye, take your finger and just flick your , uh, with your lid closed , just touch it. I mean, it's very sensitive. So you can imagine what a ball would do to your eyes . So I think goggles are a great idea for any, any sport that involves a ball or rackets. And, and honestly, I've had in racketball, and I've played racketball for 40 years, I've had goggles protect my head from rackets from the side. Oh sure . Yeah . Like getting hit. So the goggle, you know, goes to your ear . So you, with a good hard plastic goggle frame, you may be protecting more than your eyes. You may be protecting yourself from other things. So again , um, I'd say stay in your lane. Think about your level of competition. I know in tennis there are one through 5, 6, 7, 8 levels of competition. So a a a level three player plays other level threes, right? And you, you're not playing, you know, a a retired tennis pro from Stanford. So, you know, you may wanna say, I'm gonna get in the league. Well who's in this league? Is it a bunch of like gunners that are 20 year olds who've taken up pickleball? 'cause they can dominate , um, a couple 70-year-old grandmothers then, you know, I mean , you might wanna stay outta that league pick, you know, pick a , an area that's similar to your , uh, talent or skill level much like we do in golf. I mean, you hit from tees related to how far you hit the ball. And uh, you know , just 'cause there's opportunities to get in leagues everywhere. I think it makes a lot more sense to be , um, cognizant of your skill level.
Speaker 4:Okay? So have the right equipment, have the right mindset when you go into the game. And also don't do something stupid like dive for the ball,
Speaker 5:Right? And also see how you feel. My, my rules of activities are a lot of things. Patients ask me after surgery, well what can I do and when can I do it? And you know, I wanna do this or that. And I say, these are the general rules of the road. Let's say you're taking up pickleball. I would say don't play 10 games the first day I go play a game or two and see what you're like the next day. If you say , I felt pretty good, right ? I think I'm in decent shape. I've tried to stay on the treadmill now and then, or walk , um, then I'd say play three games the next time. Okay? Now if the day after you do it, you're miserable. Two games was too much, you really weren't in very good shape, right ? You're now hurting. You need to rest for a day or two. And if it hurts while you're doing it , then maybe that muscle pull that you thought was okay, the hamstringing, it's not ready yet. So if it's hurting while you're doing it, you need to stop and rest for a few days or weeks even. I mean, things that are the , we talked about strains and muscles versus joints. Like rinse in your knee or rinse in your ankle. Um , if those don't get better, you're gonna seek somebody to help your injury machine. But if you have a muscle tear, muscle tears inherently take a long time to get better. And it's weeks to months. So when you pull a calf or a hamstringing muscle, groin muscle , um, those things sometimes will bleed and you'll get, you'll get this bruising or right coloration change. And the tendency is, I need to stretch that out. Well, you're ripping more muscles stretching it. So think of cutting a steak with a knife when you cut a muscle or cut a steak , then it's juicy. That stuff's coming out. That bleeding is what hurts. So you don't wanna stretch a muscle that's been injured. You want to compress it. You wanna get like a pair of spandex or neoprene a sleeve of some kind. It's like I tell people with hamstrings, you might get some bicycle shorts. Those compress like what are the women wearing? Spanx or yeah , some of these compression undergarments. Um, and then you may also, you know, wanna ice it and just take it easy from re-injuring it. You don't want it to bleed again or, or more. And until it's feels good, the smartest thing is to just wait till your body tells you you're ready to get back into it. Alright ,
Speaker 4:So I wanna leave you with one thought as we're , we're we're closing out this podcast. I think Orthopedics Associates should sponsor a pickleball tournament, right? Where all the doctors, all the surgeons line the court right around the edges of the court and when they see somebody injured and you'll see somebody injured, you raise your hand and say, I'll take them . Right? That's a great way of A promoting the game and b, getting a few new clients in the door.
Speaker 5:Well, I'll bring it to my board, <laugh> , but I'll be honest with you , we probably will just put a poster up next to your , uh, your courts with a phone number. That's
Speaker 4:Actually a great
Speaker 5:Idea. Yeah. That's like a little simpler than getting, I mean, I can't get my partners together for a board meeting. <laugh> , you think I'm gonna get 'em to your pickleball court to line the court for errant shots that you're making?
Speaker 4:Probably not . Just , just an idea. I got thousands of 'em . Well, as we leave this podcast today and anything you wanna say to our folks who have listened to us for this past couple years as we're going the holidays?
Speaker 5:Well, we encourage, and I think all your healthcare providers encourage you to be active. Yes. There's three reasons to do it. One is you want to be active so you maintain flexibility, muscle tone, you know, inactivity killed a cat. So you don't wanna sit like a bump on a log in front of your TV all day. Uh, two, you wanna maintain your social interactive, you know , contacts and skills. And it's a good way to meet people you may not normally see right. From either sex. 'cause some of these are , uh, singles events. Some are doubles, some are mixed doubles they call it. So I think it's just a good way to interact with other people in a , um, social environment that's, that's healthy. And I think if that maintains that ability to get you outta the house and get you to , uh, an event, I think that's, that's a bonus. And then I think the other thing is to say that , um, when we push ourselves, I think we, we, we get better at everything we do. We, we, we stimulate our brain, we stimulate our, our muscles, our our , um, immune systems. I think, you know, health and vitality are important. And, and again, we kind of touched a little bit on Blue Zones, but these people have , uh, group events into their nineties and some obviously into their hundreds where they are with other people in their villages or cities and they interact and they maintain social , um, connectiveness. And I think that, you know, pickleball is a great way to bring all ages, all levels of, of skill together. Um, albeit maybe in different leagues, but they may all go to the same indoor Sure . You know, facility, right ? So , um, again, I think it's a , it's a, it's a great sport 'cause it fills a , um, a need for a good segment of our population that otherwise might not get out and do things
Speaker 4:Well. Alright folks, we're gonna leave you with that. This is been the , uh, bone and Joint Playbook with Dr. John s This is our holiday edition
Speaker 5:And a shout out to Ted's dressing sponsor . Shout
Speaker 4:Out to sponsor . Shout Ted's dressing by the way. It's , it is good stuff. You're gonna see some more about Ted's coming up soon, but , uh, we appreciate our sponsor with Ted's Creek Salad Dressing.
Speaker 5:Thanks, Terry. Happy holidays. You
Speaker 4:Too. Dr. S
Speaker 1:Connect .
Speaker 6:Thank you for joining us today on this episode of The Bone and Joint Playbook with Dr. John ert , tips for Pain-free Aging. Please join us again for another episode produced by Terry O'Brien , hip
Speaker 1:Bone Hip Bone .