MRSA Infections

2019-04-042018-10-16 by Steph

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE. With my training, I’m interested in biomechanics to avoid injuries. I read « Sport Medicine Media Guide » and I learned some good stuff.

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (S. Aureaus), or MRSA, is a bacterium that creates skin infections and other types of infections. The first time that MRSA was seen in US hospitals during the 1970s. Recently, there is a new strain of MRSA know as Community Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA, has left hospitals and began to spread in the community.

This is the strain that is prevalent among athletes. The difference between CA-MRSA and Healthcare-Associated MRSA (HA-MRSA) is in their effects. CA-MRSA usually creates skin infections while HA-MRSA causes bloodstream, urinary tract and surgical site infections. This make CA-MRSA less dangerous than HA-MRSA. Another difference is that CA-MRSA is more vulnerable to antimicrobial.

Symptoms

Signs of infections are :

Redness
Warmth, Swelling
Pus
Pain at sites where there are skin wounds
Abrasions or cuts

MRSA has the ability to spread to other organs in the body and when that happens, symptoms are more severe.

At this stage, symptoms are :

Fever
Chills
Low blood pressure
Joint pain
Severe headaches
Shortness of breath
An extensive rash over the body

These more advanced systemic symptoms require immediate medical attention.

Treatment

The 1st choice for treating MRSA skin infection is to use an antibiotic that has been created to kill bacteria with mild side effects. Most early infections with no widespread symptoms can be treated with oral antibiotics. Because of the nature of this decease and antibiotic options, many patients think they’re « cured » after only a few doses and decide by themselves to stop taking the prescribed drugs. However, MRSA is able to re-infect the patient and become resistant to antibiotics used previously.

For moderate to severe infections, treatment may be with intravenous antibiotics.

These infections associated with deep abscesses or boils require open surgical drainage in addition to antibiotic therapy. Most infections resolve in 7-10 days with an adequate treatment despite the fact that a deep abscess can take up to 4 weeks to eradicate the infection by resolving the abscess cavity.

Early identification and treatment of MRSA infections decrease the amount of playing time lost and decrease the chance that the infection will become severe. Skin may be protected by protective clothing or gear designed to prevent skin abrasions or cuts.

Prevention

It’s necessary that athletes have good personal hygiene but it must be added that athletes and visitors to athletes facilities must also keep their hands clean by washing them often with soap and water or using an alcohol-based hand rub. The minimum is to have clean hands before and after sports and activities. For example when we use weight training equipment that is shared by all gym members, it’s important to have clean hands after using toilette or when someone is injured taking care the wounds (including changing bandage).

Ordinary and antimicrobial soaps are effective for washing hands. It’s noted that liquid soap is a better option because it’s not possible to share this type of soap compared to bar soap. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contain at least 60% alcohol are the perfect choice.

Athletes should shower immediately after exercise and shouldn’t share soap and towels. Washing all uniforms and clothes after each use is important. Athlete should avoid sharing items that are in contact with the skin and avoid sharing personal items as they contact the skin. Fortunately, most surfaces don’t provoke a risk of spreading staph and MRSA.

Athletes who have had MRSA

Several high school, college and professional athletes have contracted MRSA infections. There have already been epidemics among athletes on the same team. A study published in « The New England Journal of Medicine » shows an infection MRSA among St. Louis Rams professional football franchise (USA) athletes. During a single season, MRSA infections were found among 5 of 58 Rams athletes (9 percents) that was tested. All infections developed on areas of the body that are common places for turf injury.

Stats

Today, MRSA accounts for about 50-70% of the S. Aureus infections that are present in healthcare facilities across the world.
Statistics fro the Kaiser foundation in 2007 indicated that approximately 1.2 million hospitalized patients contract MRSA infections.
Serious MRSA infection is still predominantly related to exposure in the healthcare setting, where approximately 85 percent of all serious MRSA infections occur.
Fortunately, in children under 18 years old, mortality rates are much lower (1%), even though the number of hospitalized children with MRSA has almost tripled since 2002.

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-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here .

Heat Illness

2019-03-242018-09-07 by Steph

What’s up ? This is THE stephane ANDRE. With my training, I’m interested in biomechanics to avoid injuries. I read « Sport Medicine Media Guide » and I learned some good stuff.

Every summer, hundreds of people experience sun-related illnesses and heat. Being prepared and hydrated avoids theses situations.

Why

When an athlete exercises, his/her body temperature increase and the body sweats to cool the body. During this process, body fluids and electrolytes are lost. If the boy is not recharged with fluids and electrolytes, it’s dehydration and it increase the risk of heat illness as a heat stroke.

Symptoms

Symptoms are :

Chills
Dark colored urine
Dry mouth
Headaches
Thirst
Weakness

If the heat illness progress, there are more serious symptoms like :

Difficulty breathing
Body temperature increasing to dangerous levels
Muscle cramps
Nausea
Tingling of the limbs
Death

How to prevent

The most effective treatments for heat illness are :

Proper training for the heat
Fluid replacement before, during, and after exertion
Appropriate clothing (light colored, loose fitting and limited to one layer)
Early recognition via direct monitoring of athlete by other players, coaches and medical staff
Monitoring the intensity of physical activity appropriate for fitness and how an athlete has acclimated to conditions.
If possible, having an athletic trainer on site during events and practices to properly prevent and treat heat illnesses.

In situations where the training program is intense or during a trip in a hot climate, an athlete should limit the intensity and duration of the training session. Thereafter, the athlete will increase the training’s intensity for a period of 7-14 days to allow to the body, the time to adjust to the climate and environmental conditions. For athletes with respiratory, gastrointestinal or other diseases, they should especially evaluate these new conditions.

When an athlete should hydrate

It’s necessary to hydrate before, during and after a training session. Drinking 47cl (16 ounces) of water is recommended 1 hour before exercises. Hydration should continue with 11-23cl (4-8 ounces) of water every 15-20 minutes throughout the effort

There is a trick to track the hydration’s level is to weigh before and after a physical activity. If the athlete is lighter after a physical activity, this means that there a deficit of fluids (indicated by weight loss) and it’s necessary to recharge them. For the next physical activity, it will be essential to drink more to evaluate the losses (perspiration). An athlete who loses more than 2-3% of his/her bodyweight during exercise may decrease the performance and the body’s physiological function.

If the athlete is heavier after a physical activity, it means that there is a surplus of fluids (indicated by gain weight). For the next physical activity, it will be essential to drink less to evaluate the surplus.

How to treat it

When you see signs of heat illness or heat stroke, it may be an imminent danger of death. It’s necessary that a person immediately call for medical assistance while you’re cooling the person at risk.

Treatment included :

Getting the athlete to a shaded area
If it heat stroke, cool the athlete rapidly using cold water immersion. If immersion is not available you may use spray from a hose, cold water sponging, or placing cold towels over the entire body
Monitoring body temperature
Providing cool beverage if possible (i.e., if the athlete doesn’t have altered consciousness).
Getting medical assistance as soon as possible.

Heat exhaustion is a type of heat illness that can happen after several days of exposure to high temperature and improper or unbalanced fluid recharging.

Statistics

Heat stroke is a type of serious illness related to heat. It can cause death to athletes and this is probably the leading cause of athlete death during the months of July and August.
The body produces 1.8 liters (a half of gallon) of perspiration to cool the body every hour. If there are not enough fluids or the heat is overwhelming the body, the person may develop heat-related illness.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph

P.S. If you’re in Miami and you like Caribbean food, go to my cousin’s bistro to eat Haitian food, click here.

Start A Smart Company

2018-08-23 by Steph

What’s up !!! This is THE stephane ANDRE. I watch an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned some good stuff.

To create a company, most people advise to leave school or job to be 100% focused on creating the company. I advise you to start your business part-time and continue your school or job. An excellent method for this is « Lean Startup » . The principle of Lean Startup is to put on the market as fast as possible your product/service at minimum viable.

2 different methods

Classic

Let’s take a closer look at what most people do. A person has an idea to start a company, so this person does a market research to minimize the risks. Then this person will seek financing with bank loans after calculating the needs of the business. These business needs based on a 3-years business plan that is extremely theoretical and hypothetical. You should know that in 99% of cases, as soon as the company is open and prospects are in contact with the products/services, these business plans have no connection with the reality of the field.

The problem with this method is that this person works for 1 year to create a product/service and when it’s available, this person realize that everyone doesn’t care. When the product/service isn’t selling, the stress rises enormously and you have to find a way to pay back people who lend money to your company.

Lean startup

With the Lean Startup’s method, when a person has a product/service idea, the principle is to find the minimum basic function of that which would interest the audience and the prospects who would be willing to buy. Then you have to do a test as soon as possible on the market. There is something very important that Michael Masterson said : « Before your business make its first sale, it’s nothing more than a set of unproven ideas that you are spending money on ».

That is why it’s necessary to set up a field test in the most real conditions possible with the most minimal version of your product/service.

Here is an example with someone who wants to buy a parking lot to rent it :

With the classic method, this person bought a random parking lot hoping to have many prospects interested in renting it.

With the Lean Startup method, this person will find an interesting parking lot to buy. Then this person will post an ad in an ads posting site and on social media and will wait to see if there are peope interested in renting it. If people call this person to say : « I’m interested in having your parking lot, I’d like to rent it », in this case this person will buy the parking lot. If nobody is interested in the parking lot, this person will not buy it.

Test quicky

There are several other methods like this to test. In my case, it’s my blog to build my brand and until today, I’m doing it part-time. Here is a 3-part article in the power of a blog ( here ).

Create my blog allowed me to :

To know if I could find and keep my rhythm to write articles
To know if I could share interesting things to create an audience
To know if I could possibly monitize this blog with this audience

Once you have the idea, you need to test it as soon as possible to see what is happening on the field to collect feedback from the first customers and to know if you have an interesting business model or not. This test is excellent for eliminating a lot of uncertainty.

The cool thing about the Lean Startup method is that you’ll really start investing a lot of time, money and energy when you have your first customers who will help you improve your product/service.

Let things be clear, Lean Startup isn’t a magic formula, it’s necessary to act and start the process again, until you have a product/service that interest people.

Subscribe to my newsletter and share this article if you think it can help someone you know.

-Steph