Winter youth personal injuries, knowing them and preventing them

Many children suffer personal injuries during the winter. Many of these injuries are related to skiing, snow boarding and sledding but doctors at emergency rooms in California also said they are seeing a lot of surf injuries around winter time. Overuse injuries are also common especially when winter is warmer than usual. Growing up athletes continue to practice the same sport they usually practice during summer over fall and winter not allowing sufficient time to rest to their bodies.

Children have a much higher risk of getting injured in skiing and snowboarding activities than adults.  Most injuries occur when children are still learning how to ski or how to snowboard.  When a student skier or snowboarder doesn’t have full control of his or her movement, he or she can sometimes be unable to avoid obstacles. Confirmed skiers usually also know how to fall safely. ER doctors note that male children have a higher risk to suffer severe head and neck injuries. These type of injuries often happen when a youth skis or snowboards too fast for his skill level.

It may seem surprising but on the West Coast surf injuries are also pretty common among youth during the winter. The waves are usually bigger during the winter and emergency room doctors are seeing an increase in head injuries, broken bones as well as ankle and knee sprains.

Young athletes who are practicing their sport during the summer but continue to train over the fall and the winter because of unusual good weather are also at risk of injuries related to overuse. When some parts of the body don’t have time to heal proprely between training they can become injured. Overuse injury can have negative effect on growth and lead to long term health problems.

Concussion is one of the most common injury for kids. Youth concussions occur  all year round and in all type of sports including skiing, snowboarding, surfing and any athletic activity.

To prevent concussion or any type of youth injury parents should always recommend  to their children to know their surroundings and stress to them the importance of staying alert.

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