Health & Safety

Keeping children's brains and bodies safe during sports is a top priority, which is why close attention is paid to helmets and pads. But what about children's mouths? April is National Facial Protection Month, which makes it an excellent time to take steps to protect your kid's mouth from unnecessary injury with an affordable but often overlooked device: the mouth guard.

Over-hydration can be as dangerous to your health as dehydration. So what does a sweaty athlete need to know about staying adequately hydrated without stomach sloshing? Here are some tips.

A former school psychologist explains the kinds of services parents should reasonably expect from their child's public school in the event they suffer a concussion, including whether their children are entitled to academic accommodations, such as an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or so-called 504 Plan.

The National Athletic Trainers' Association has launched the first-ever Safe Sports School award program to recognize secondary schools around the country that provide safe environments for student athletes and reinforce the importance of providing the best level of care, injury prevention and treatment.

Concussion experts agree that the taking of a detailed concussion history as part of a student-athlete's preparticipation physical evaluation is valuable because it can identify athletes at high risk of further injury, provides an opportunity for concussion education, and modifying playing style to reduce risk.

Head injuries in football, as in other contact and collision sports, cannot be completely eliminated, but there ARE steps that can be taken to minimize risk. MomsTEAM's high school football concussion documentary, "The Smartest Team," focuses on "The Six Pillars" of concussion risk management: education, protection, identification, treatment, return to play and retirement.

Balanced neck strength may reduce the acceleration of the head during the act of heading a soccer ball, thus reducing the risk of brain injury from such low grade hits, says a 2013 study. The study adds to a growing body of evidence that strengthening neck muscles may be a way to reduce head injury risk from concussion and repetitive sub-concussive trauma.

There is good news and bad news on the youth sports injury front. The good news is that sports and recreation musculoskeletal injuries declined 12.4 percent in the U.S. over the past 10 years for children ages 5 to 14 years. The bad news: injuries in football and soccer went up, says a new study.