August 27, 2020 9:00 pm

Friday, We Investigate How to Rebuild Human Bodies

The way athletes come back from injuries has changed. Not too long ago, if a player tore their ACL, they’d be out for the entire year or longer. Now, it’s mere months. How has the change occurred? What medical advancements have helped the recovery and prevention process in sports?

On this week’s episode of StarTalk Sports Edition, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice investigate alongside Dr. Kevin R. Stone, MD. Kevin is an Orthopedic Surgeon at The Stone Clinic, Chairman at the Stone Research Foundation, and author of the upcoming book Play Forever: How to Recovery From Injury and Thrive and he’s here to help us understand what’s going on in the field today. To start, you’ll hear more about what Dr. Stone does in his work. What’s the difference between an orthopedic surgeon and a physician who handles pain management? Kevin tells us why having a scientist’s mind always allows him to look towards the future.

Discover more about “biologics.” Kevin explains why he thinks we’re in the “anabolic era” of orthopedics. You’ll also learn why tissue donation and working with growth factors have been two game changers in the field. Find out about “lubricity.” Kevin tells us why most sports injuries are mental errors and why 85% of people who’ve been told they need a knee replacement probably don’t.

In our next segment, we take a look at the career of an elite athlete that’s a close-friend to StarTalk…our very own co-host Gary O’Reilly! Gary takes us through the many injuries he’s had to deal with and what it was like to manage the pain. We explore the most common soccer injuries of the 80s and 90s. Gary also explains why at a certain point, every athlete has to make a choice to continue or give it up.

To close things out, Kevin pops back into the conversation to ponder the future. Can we use animal tissue in people? Can biologics help provide a cure for COVID-19? We also discuss if the body can heal itself more than we thought. All that, plus, we dive into the ethics of it all and how we can learn from athletes to keep making the recovery process shorter.

Please join us tomorrow for Rebuilding the Human Body at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re a StarTalk+ Patron you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
– Ian Mullen