TY  - JOUR
AB  - The long-term health effects of football (soccer) have received significant attention in recent years. While brain health is currently the focus of this interest, potential long-term risks or benefits related to cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and cancer are also of interest to sports medicine professionals. However, studies assessing the overall health risks for professional football players remain scarce. We introduce 'SoccHealth', a satellite project to the German National Cohort (NAKO), Germany's largest population-based cohort study. SoccHealth examined 348 former professional football players aged 40-69 using the infrastructure and comprehensive examination programme of NAKO. The German Statutory Accidental Insurance for Professional Athletes identified and invited male players, while female players were recruited among former national team members. Details of the examination programme and the sociodemographic and career-related characteristics of the participants are described. The identical examination programme for the NAKO participants provides the opportunity to draw general population controls according to various definitions and focus on the respective research question to be analysed. This report delineates one approach to evaluate the long-term health effects of football across a broad range of diseases.
AU  - Berger, K.*
AU  - Baurecht, H.*
AU  - Stein, M.*
AU  - Heise, J.K.*
AU  - Castell, S.*
AU  - Weisser, L.*
AU  - Schikowski, T.*
AU  - Oliver, K.*
AU  - Lieb, W.*
AU  - Micolajczyk, R.*
AU  - Kluttig, A.*
AU  - Schmitt, B.*
AU  - Stang, A.*
AU  - Pischon, T.*
AU  - Peters, A.
AU  - Brenner, H.*
AU  - Leitzmann, M.*
AU  - Krist, L.*
AU  - Keil, T.*
AU  - Karch, A.*
AU  - Meyer, T.*
C1  - 71938
C2  - 56354
CY  - British Med Assoc House, Tavistock Square, London Wc1h 9jr, England
TI  - SoccHealth: A health status examination of former professional football (soccer) players within the German National Cohort.
JO  - BMJ Open Sport Exerc. Med.
VL  - 10
IS  - 4
PB  - Bmj Publishing Group
PY  - 2024
SN  - 2055-7647
ER  - 

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Before and during pregnancy, women often aim to improve their lifestyle so as to provide a healthier environment for their developing child. It remains unresolved, however, as to whether physical activity (PA) during pregnancy poses a possible risk or whether it might even have beneficial effects on the developing child. There is increasing evidence that PA during pregnancy is indeed beneficial to maternal physiological and psychological health and that it is generally not detrimental to the fetal cardiovascular system and neuronal function in the developing child. This also led to international recommendations for PAs during pregnancy. In the current review, we aimed to comprehensively assess the evidence of beneficial and harmful effects of maternal PA, including high-performance sports, on fetal development. The different mental and body-based relaxation techniques presented here are frequently performed during pregnancy. We found a considerable number of studies addressing these issues. In general, neither low key, moderate maternal PA nor relaxation techniques were observed to have a harmful effect on the developing child. However, we identified some forms of PA which could have at least a transient unfavourable effect. Notably, the literature currently available does not provide enough evidence to enable us to make a general conclusive statement on this subject. This is due to the lack of longitudinal studies on the metabolic and cognitive effects of regular PA during pregnancy and the wide diversity of methods used. In particular, the kind of PA investigated in each study differed from study to study.
AU  - Bauer, I.
AU  - Hartkopf, J.
AU  - Kullmann, S.
AU  - Schleger, F.
AU  - Hallschmid, M.
AU  - Pauluschke-Fröhlich, J.*
AU  - Fritsche, A.
AU  - Preissl, H.
C1  - 58681
C2  - 48297
TI  - Spotlight on the fetus: How physical activity during pregnancy influences fetal health: A narrative review.
JO  - BMJ Open Sport Exerc. Med.
VL  - 6
IS  - 1
PY  - 2020
SN  - 2055-7647
ER  -