For America’s baby boomers, a generation weaned on Jack La Lanne, shaped by Jane Fonda videos and sculpted in the modern- day gym, too much of a good thing has consequences.
Encouraged by doctors to exercise three to five times a week, a legion of running, swimming and biking boomers is flouting the conventional limits of the middle-aged body’s abilities and filling the nation’s operating rooms and orthopedists’ offices in the process.
They need knee and hip replacements, surgery for cartilage and ligament damage, and treatment for tendinitis, arthritis, bursitis and stress fractures. The phenomenon has a name in medical circles: boomeritis.
“Boomers are the first generation that grew up exercising and the first that expects, indeed demands, that they be able to exercise into their 70s,” said Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, a Philadelphia-area orthopedic surgeon.
“But evolution doesn’t work that quick. Physically, you can’t necessarily do at 50 what you did at 25. We’ve worn out the warranty on some body parts. That’s why so many boomers are breaking down. It ought to be called Generation Ouch.”
Led by baby boomers, loosely defined as the 78 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964, sports injuries have become the No. 2 reason for visits to a doctor’s office nationwide, behind the common cold, according to a 2003 survey by National Ambulatory Medical Care.
A Bureau of Labor Statistics study said infirmities associated with the athletic activities of middle-aged adults were the source of 488 million days of restricted work in 2002. When the Consumer Product Safety Commission examined emergency- room visits in 1998, it found sports-related injuries to baby boomers had risen by 33 percent since 1991 and amounted to $18.7 billion in medical costs.
A generation accustomed to using ingenuity, initiative or scientific gains to break through or overcome communal barriers, baby boomers have adopted a familiar approach to their injury predicament: Let’s fix it.
“The baby-boomer patient, faced with a problem, even a sore knee, does not go silently into the good night,” said Dr. Riley Williams, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. “That patient’s mind-set is that there must be something that can be done. And thanks to improved diagnostics and surgical advancements, often there is.”
It was rare 15 years ago for doctors to perform complex reconstruction of the knee’s anterior cruciate ligament in patients older than 50; now it is common. The same is true for repairs to the shoulder’s rotator cuff and operations to mend intricate ankle and elbow ailments. Elaborate knee and hip replacements have become routine.
Williams said about half his sports-medicine practice is made up of baby boomers.
“But it is also true that I have people coming in who have already seen 10 doctors, had eight MRIs and want a third rotator- cuff surgery so they can serve during their regular weekend tennis games,” Williams said. “And then, the answer is, ‘No, you are done.”‘
John McGowan, 49, of West Chester, Pa., coaches three of his children’s sports teams and exercises regularly, including the five to seven youth basketball games he referees each week. McGowan had major reconstructive knee surgery in 1980 and has since had four arthroscopic procedures performed on his knees.
“Every time I go see my doctor, we agree I should referee just one more year,” said McGowan, a health-plan administrator. “This has been my last year for about four or five years now.”
Still, health care professionals agree that baby boomers can extend the warranty on their aging frames.
“If people find help getting in balance, there is no reason we all can’t keep exercising because it is good for you and it makes you feel good,” DiNubile said.
It is a lesson not lost on Generation X. The offspring of the baby boomers have also spent a lifetime enveloped by America’s fitness boom. And what awaits them in middle age? Once again, it appears the baby boomers may have started something.
“The next generation is even more active, and many have already had surgeries for athletic injuries in high school or middle school,” said Gene Schafer, an athletic trainer in Manhattan. “I think this whole thing is just beginning. Maybe in 20 or 30 years we’ll know if things have evolved into any real progress.”