By Dr. Mark Lucas, D.C. aka “TheMotoDoc”
TheMotoDoc.com

Part of racing is the expectation that you are going to get injured.  Injuries happen in many ways. Injuries can be costly so here are a few tips to help minimize the financial impact:

1) Join CALSTAR.   CalStar is a California emergency air ambulance company.  For a $40 annual membership fee ($45 for the entire family) you can get airlifted from anywhere in California, Western Nevada, and Southern Oregon for free. The average charge for an air ambulance is around $7000.  So whether you are injured at a track or mountain biking or even in a car accident the $40 a year is cheap insurance.

www.calstar.org

2) Add med-pay to your auto insurance.  For only a couple hundred extra dollars you can add a med-pay addition to your auto insurance policy.  Whether you have health insurance or not financially the med-pay option makes sense.  What this assures is that if you are in a car accident you can receive initial care anywhere with out any hassle.  If you have health insurance you may have deductibles and will have co-pays and may only get access to certain medical facilities.  With med-pay you have coverage anywhere you go, and you will not go out of pocket until the limit is met, at which point your health insurance will kick in and cover the additional expenses.

3) Work out on a regular basis.  Proper conditioning is the best insurance for not getting hurt while riding. Sure a lot of crashes happen because people ride over their head or even tangle with another rider on the track. But the most common source of crashing is fatigue. You can even sustain injuries with out ever crashing.  These injuries are muscle strains or tears and can happen from over use or repetitive stress.  This type of injury can also happen from riding with tendonitis or fasciitis, conditions where the soft tissue is weakened from chronic inflammation.

The single most important area to exercise is the cardio vascular system.  When the cardio vascular system is fatigued the result is overall body weakness and mental weakness.  In my book mental weakness is the worst because it causes the rider to mentally be a split second off the pace of the action. The rider’s reaction time then lags and instead of anticipating the track the rider now reacts to the track.  This phenomenon is regarded to as “riding behind the bike”.  This is where people usually start getting in trouble. Common signs that this is happening is an increase in little mistakes usually caused by slow reaction times and sitting more in the middle or slightly behind the middle of the bike. This usually causes the front end to be less precise and little mistakes start popping up.

FYI: Wednesday nights between 7 and 9:30 p.m. I hold two integrative circuit training classes geared specifically towards the demands of motocross and off-road racing. The price is $15 per 75 minute class and class size is limited to 5 people only. If interested you must schedule.  408-294-4074, or email through themotodoc.com

4) Antioxidants.  You might have read the article in racerxill by Aldon Baker.  He plugs a multi level marketing product called Monavie.  It’s marketed as a super antioxidant fruit drink.  The reason he talks about it is it benefit to breaking down free radicals in the body. Over the past couple of years there has been a lot of research on the oxidative stress to the body from exercising on a large scale. This research has been going on for years, but really took a step forward when Lance Armstrong developed cancer. Common sense drew the question of how can a guy, who eats good, trains religiously, has probably the most efficient metabolism ever seen and has the best preventative healthcare at his fingertips get cancer?

Well one of the answers leaned towards oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a bi product of your tissues consuming oxygen.  Essentially what happens is when O2 (oxygen) is broken into 2 O’s a negatively charged ion (also know as a free radical) is left over. This ion can cause damage to surrounding tissues and is suspected to be a cause of aging and most disease processes.  Now oxidative stress is not the only way free radicals are formed, there are other processes, the most important being the type of food that a person consumes. Anyway…..the result of most research indicates that anybody exercising in an aerobic capacity over one hour per day should take some form of antioxidant.  Subsequently, the more you work out the more susceptible you are to free radical formation.  In comparison to us mere mortals most professional athletes train and/or compete several hours per day 6-7 days a week and run a higher than average risk.

There are other ways of getting antioxidants or stimulating antioxidant production in your body.  First of all any consumable plant, fruit or vegetable is loaded with antioxidants. Every plant that grows produces it’s own form of antioxidant.  This is actually part of the plants immune system. Vitamins A, C and E are the most common plant based antioxidants.  Fortunately our own body produces it’s own antioxidant.  It is called Glutathione.  Glutathione is actually the bodies most efficient antioxidant.  But, taking glutathione is not the most efficient way of increasing glutathione in the body.  To improve glutathione production it is better to take the precursors and let your body produce the actual glutathione molecule itself. And with that said I think I will continue this conversation in the next news letter where I will explain some of the processes that antioxidants are actually involved with……..

See ya out at the track!!!