Biomedical Engineering

If pitchers improved their speeds as much as runners have, then baseball players would, statistically speaking, be able to throw at least 110 mph (assuming Walter Johnson could hit 101). Look at the sprinting field: many can finish within 3% of Usain Bolt's 9.69-s at 9.98-s. That list consists of people who didn't even qualify for the Olympics and some that might not make the finals at the NCAA Championships.

If pitching improvement was similar to sprinting, there should be a lot more people who can break the 100.9 mph plateau, much less go beyond. USA Women's sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, who set the women's 100-m record in 1988, surpassed Don Lippincott's 1901 record by 0.11s, (roughly 1%). But are there even any women who can throw 100 mph? Why the drastic difference?

Furthermore, if pitchers improved as much as swimmers have, then baseballs should be scorching past hitters at over 130 mph! Today's baseball players have better training regiments, better nutrition, modern science and technology, so what gives? Below, although hard to see, is a graph that shows the scope of falling sprint times compared to increases in baseball pitch speeds over about the same number of years.

Human Physiology Reaches Its Limit

Noam Scheiber, a senior editor at The New Republic, dived into this question and found an easy explanation. Humans have not jumped much on the radar gun because they can't. At some point, the body's creation of torque in the arm causes tendons and ligaments to snap. According to Glenn Fleise, a biomechanical engineer who studies pitching at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, AL, the threshold for an elbow ligament to snap is about 80 Newton-meters of torque, a fact Fleise discovered after testing human cadavers. Guess how much torque it takes to throw in excess of 100 mph? Just about 80 Newton-meters.

Isn't it ironic that Joel Zumaya, history's hardest thrower by many accounts, has spent more time on the disabled list with arm problems than he has pitching for the past two years? In a recent outing where he was injured and sidelined for the season, Zumaya said that after he threw his last fastball he "felt like my arm exploded." Joel Zumaya is not alone. Many of the pitchers on the 100+ list have had major arm injuries, such as Kerry Wood, Eric Gagne, Rich Harden, and recently, Billy Wagner.

So why can athletes in other sports continue to improve? Track stars and swimmers don't put as much pressure on their bodies at any point of competition as baseball players do. In addition, they rely upon the increased strength in the ligaments and tendons of the legs. These athletes have yet to approach the maximum torque threshold for these ligaments.

How Surgery Can Actually Improve Throwing Speed – Sort Of

Tommy John Surgery, often the three worst words a pitcher can ever hear, might actually be a blessing in disguise – if it could be perfected. Replacing the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), the ligament most often damaged by throwing hard, with one from a hamstring can increase the maximum torque threshold in the arm. Theoretically, if someone ever healed 100% from T.J. surgery, that person should be able to throw faster than before. Some patients report they have increased their throwing speeds by 2-5 mph, although some therapists attribute this to a strength regiment closely followed during post-op rehabilitation.

With the exception of the occasional individual who can defy nature or has a physical abnormality that allows him (or her) to overcome the physical limitations of the normal human body, it looks like until we can engineer a better ligament or wait long enough to evolve, baseball's counterpart to the 100-m sprint, the blistering fastball, will likely stay right about where it is. Some may be able to replicate Zumaya's fireball, but they are, in turn, playing with fire.

Pitchers trying to break through the 100+ ceiling might find that the only thing they consistently break is their own arm.

Resources:

http://www.slate.com/id/2116402/
http://www.slate.com/id/2116402/sidebar/2116451/
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/fastest-pitcher-in-baseball.shtml
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/7630/news;_ylt=AitWQibWYJ0f0N3JGpQ3XCaFCLcF

Every four years, I find myself involved in the same discussion. The latest was thanks to Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. What is the limit of human performance? How much faster, farther, and higher can we go before we reach our limit? How can we achieve records that are broken only once in a lifetime, and not several times in one competition? When will humans just max out our physiology? It's not that hard to imagine reaching an end to the human body's (non-drug enhanced) abilities. Especially because in one major world sport, it's already happened. But first, let's check the track and the pool.

Running Down a Dream

Consider the progression of the world record for the 100-m dash. In 1912, Don Lippincott set the record in Stockholm, Sweden at 10.6 seconds. That mark was broken five times by 1960 and was down to 10.0 seconds. By the early 1970s, the 10-second barrier was broken, and (ignoring known performance-enhancing drug users), it was down to 9.84 by 1996. By 2008, in the (hopefully) post-steriod era that saw many records rescinded as their owners tested positive, Usain Bolt crushed the record by a total of .05 (in two successive races), jogging the last ten meters to a mind blowing 9.69. Many believe that had he run as hard as he could, he would have broken 9.60, finally shaving one full second from the first record set by Don Lippincott 96 years ago.

Will it take athletes 100 years to go one second faster? One second may not seem like a lot, but consider the percentages. It is an improvement of about 9.4%. During that same time span, the record for the 800-m (half-mile) went from 1:51.9 to 1:41.11. That's a change of roughly 9.6%. But running isn't the only sport seeing records fall like this, however.

Splish Splash, And the Records Crash

Swimming, as you may have expected, has seen even greater improvements in speed as the sport has become more common around the world. When Michael Phelps broke the 200-m freestyle record in Beijing, it represented about a 32% decrease in time over the record set in 1910.

Everyone knows that measurable records based on speed and distance fall all the time. That stands in contrast to "counting records" such as number of games won, number of homeruns, etc. But there is one performance marker that really hasn't fallen: how fast can someone throw a baseball.?

Van Pelt Asks the Question

ESPN Radio personality Scott Van Pelt asked why (besides the lack of accurate measuring equipment) there haven't been more pitchers who have thrown over 100 mph in their career. That list includes Walter Johnson, who debuted in 1907; Bob Feller, of the 1940's and 1950s; Nolan Ryan of the 1970s and 1980s; and, currently, pitchers like Billy Wagner (and 19 others contemporaries of Wagner, according to some sources), who have hit 101 MPH or better, at least once.

So how is it that Johnson, Feller, Ryan, and Wagner - pitchers 100 years apart - hit just about the same maximum velocity? Some people say that modern-day hurlers Joel Zumaya and Mark Wohlers have broken 103 mph, but some stadiums have less than reliable radar guns and there is much debate over whether or not the readings were accurate. Even with Zumaya supposedly throwing 104.8 on October 10, 2006, something is amiss.

In the next edition of this blog, I will dig into the biomechanical/biomedical reasons as to why baseball has not kept up with the improvements in speed seen by most other major sports around the world.

Resources:

http://www.slate.com/id/2116402/
http://www.slate.com/id/2116402/sidebar/2116451/
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/fastest-pitcher-in-baseball.shtml
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/players/7630/news;_ylt=AitWQibWYJ0f0N3JGpQ3XCaFCLcF

When I was in high school, I had the coolest pen – it was silver, sleek, and wrote smoothly. On one side, however, there was the logo for a prescription drug. I had no idea what the drug was or what it did, but it had come from a friend whose mother was a nurse. Years later, I dated a guy whose mother was also a nurse. She would come home with pens, hats, electronic organizers, bags, and more from the various pharmaceutical companies that visited her office.

While I thought these trinkets were fun, I hadn't given much thought to the pharmaceuticals that they represented. I guess I was part of the problem, because now the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) are concerned that giving out these freebies can foster misconceptions that drug companies aren't interested in informing physicians about scientific and medical issues. The PhRMA has even established a voluntary code of conduct that now prohibits these "non-educational" items.

In Minneapolis, a Duluth-based operator of hospitals and clinics –SMDC Health System – purged the trinkets that had been given to the hospital over the years. It took 20 shopping carts to take all of the stuff away! SMDC's efforts were designed to show patients that their doctors are serious about controlling costs and making unbiased decisions. The backlash against free gifts and food is the result of 2006 article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which claimed that receiving even cheap gifts can affect how a doctor prescribes medication.

From the JAMA article, "The Prescription Project" was born. This project is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts in an effort to counter aggressive marketing campaigns to physicians by the pharmaceutical and medical industries. Marica Hams, director of the Prescription Project, hopes that other medical facilities follow the lead of SMDC Health System. ""This seems like a pretty aggressive way to kick off a policy like that…it sends an important message, I think, for how a strict policy can be implemented in an effective way", she said.

Although the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America aren't asking all hospitals to take this "clean sweep" approach, the PhRMA isn't opposed to it either. As spokesman Ken Johnson says, "the onus is on us now to do a better job of explaining the job and the importance of marketing representatives."

Like some of the organizations mentioned in this article, I think the "clean sweep" method is very aggressive. However, I can see the purpose behind it. Most people like free things, and providing pens, toys, etc. is just another way to get a company name or drug nestled in the back of people's minds. What do you think?

Resources:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/for-doctors-no-more-drug-company-trinkets/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22756905/

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/19/minn_health_system_purges_drug_trinkets/

With new guidelines to test cholesterol in children, we are left to consider how childhood obesity has risen so dramatically in the first place. These days, parenting isn't easy. For many families, having one parent stay home with a child is not an option. After all, the financial status of these families demands two working parents.

When relatives or private child-care is not an option, many parents decide that putting their child in the hands of a public daycare is the best choice. But now studies are reporting that public daycare may provide a link to childhood obesity. Let's look at the facts.

University Research

According to researchers at the University of Illinois and the Harvard School of Public Health, toddlers who attend public daycare tend to gain more weight then those who are taken care of privately. Juhee Kim and Karen Peterson studied a database of 8,000 infants from 2001 and 2002. From this database, they concluded that 55% of children were taken care of by people who were not their parents – usually relatives or public childcare professionals. Of the 55%, half of the children were enrolled in full-time public daycare – 40% of them beginning at younger then three months old.

Kim and Peterson also found that babies in public daycare facilities gained an average of about 175 grams (about 0.4 lb) over nine months when compared to babies who were taken care of exclusively by their parents or private care facilities.

Public Daycare and Weight Gain

Additionally, public daycare babies are more likely to start eating solid foods sooner. Juhee Kim explains that infants go through a critical period from three to six months. During this time, parental bonds are formed. This is also the time when most infants transition from milk to solid foods. Although the connection isn't confirmed, Kim believes that the weight gain may be attributed to the irregular eating patterns and habits given by public caregivers. "If children are cared for by their parents, they are exposed to only one environment. But if they are put in a child-care setting, then they have two different environments and two different feeding patterns. That might be a factor for more weight gain," Kim says.

Research on what contributes to childhood obesity is ongoing. Additional questions are posed by this study, such as "what / when / how are these babies being fed". While daycare facilities are shown to enhance cognitive development for later academic success, the way they establish eating habits remains a subject for debate.

Resources:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1821143,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-healthsci

http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/6262/Do-Your-Kids-Have-High-Cholesterol

Heart disease continues to be among the leading killers in the world today. In the United States, waistbands continue to stretch – even among children. As childhood obesity rates climb, so do concerns about children's heath. High levels of cholesterol, a lipid transported in blood plasma, have been linked to cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and stroke.

Recently, the New York Times reported that pediatricians are recommending cholesterol testing for children, starting as young as eight years old. They hope that testing children will make it easier to detect and prevent adult heart problems. The notion of testing is controversial since many parents don't want to administer prescription drugs to children. Many also remain skeptical of whether this is the best way to prevent adult heart disease.

New guidelines about this issue were presented by the American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday. Advocates claim that the first signs of heart disease show up during childhood. Because childhood obesity is estimated at around 30%, doctors fear that it could develop into heart-attacks or diabetes later in life.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins are relatively low-risk, says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, professor and chief of neonatology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. "The risk of giving statins at a lower age is less than the benefit you're going to get out of it," she claims. Statins have only been used since the mid-1980s, and there is no proof that they will lower the risk of a heart attack in middle age. Despite having little data regarding the pediatric use of statins, Dr. Bhatia says that recent research shows that the drugs are generally safe for children.

Under the new guidelines, it will be recommended that children who come from families with a history of heart disease be screened between the ages two and ten. Screening is also suggested in cases where the family history is unknown, the child is overweight/obese, and if the child has diabetes. If the screening shows that cholesterol levels are normal, pediatricians suggest retesting the child in three to five years.

If cholesterol levels are "bad", the guidelines call for children eight years or older to be given statins. "Bad" cholesterol under the new guidelines is a condition which affects a child with levels of 190 milligrams per deciliter, or 160 milligrams per deciliter or higher and a family history of early heart disease or two additional risk factors. It is not detailed how long the child should be on the medication.

Resources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/health/07cholesterol.html?_r=1&ref=health&oref=slogin

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/1/141

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/HeartDiseaseNews/story?id=5325871&page=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol