Sport medicine lifestyle researchers #TeamUP against diabetes, heart disease and depression

More than half of South Africans do not play sports or exercise regularly. A new University of Pretoria (UP) Institute will address the problem by supporting healthy, active lifestyles through research.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), or diseases of lifestyle, are taking a greater toll than ever on human health

Globalisation and industrialised food systems have put citizens of developing countries at risk of obesity, heart disease and other metabolic disorders. In South Africa, NCDs are rapidly becoming themost common cause of death, with the heaviest burden falling on low- and middle-income populations.

Tobacco use, an unhealthy diet, insufficient physical activity and the harmful use of alcohol are the behavioural risk factors that contribute most to NCD prevalence; all four are associated with economic transition, rapid urbanisation and 21st-century living conditions for poor and middle-income communities. In particular, a lack of physical activity is pervasive among South Africans and is the major contributor to NCD prevalence.

At the University of Pretoria (UP), there are multiple departments, researchers and health practitioners working in the broad area of sport and exercise medicine, but there has been no single institute coordinating research and other activities in this area. With better direction and coordination, UP could make a major impact in the areas of sports, exercise and lifestyle research.

Institute for Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research

To address these issues, UP created the Institute for Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research (ISEMLR) with the aim of bringing various aspects of sport and lifestyle together under a single roof

Headed by Professor Martin Schwellnus and launched in June 2015, the institute aims to address one of UP’s four strategic research themes: Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Interventions for Chronic Disease.

The vision for the institute is to be an “international leader in scientific, translational research that promotes health and well-being in the population through lifestyle interventions, reduces exercise-related injuries and medical complications, and promotes sporting excellence on a platform characterised by world class education, service delivery and the use of modern technology.” The group aims to collaborate widely within UP research groups as well as nationally and internationally, and is aiming to be a self-sustaining research institute by generating its own income to cover research costs.

A new multi-disciplinary research institute at UP will help patients and athletes maintain an active, healthy lifestyle

Sports medicine and lifestyle researchers at UP will soon find themselves under one, brand new roof - COO of the UP Institute for Sports, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research (ISEMLR), Dr Jill Borresen, and its Director, Prof Martin Schwellnus, are renovating and relationship-building in preparation

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UP's new sport, exercise medicine and lifestyle institute will promote sports excellence and #healthy living through research #UPSports

Health practitioners and scientists at a new UP institute will focus on five high-impact research areas in the field of Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research.

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New research institute takes UP sports excellence to the next level #UPResearchMatters #UPSports

The University of Pretoria has an impressive track-record of sports excellence: over half of South African medallists at the recent Olympics and Commonwealth Games were assisted by UP. Now a new institute brings UP’s sports medicine researchers together under one roof.

Read More (page 4)

UP researchers to make use of #bigdata, sensor #technology and #genomics to support #healthy, active lifestyles

Wearable fitness trackers and genetic differences between people can provide sport researchers at the UP ISEMLR with #bigdata to understand and support #healthy, active lifestyles.

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See researcher profiles, videos, infographic and gallery on the right sidebar.

 

A new multi-disciplinary research institute at UP will help patients and athletes keep active

Sports medicine and lifestyle researchers at UP will soon find themselves under one, brand new roof - COO of the UP Institute for Sports, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research (ISEMLR), Dr Jill Borresen, and its Director, Prof Martin Schwellnus, are renovating and relationship-building in preparation.

Dr Borresen and Prof Schwellnus have been hard at work reaching out to anybody and everybody at the University of Pretoria (UP) that could potentially be involved with sports and lifestyle research. This includes UP's Faculty of Health Sciences’ clinical departments as well as biokineticists and biomechanists at UP. They hope to incorporate as many of these groups as possible into the ISEMLR over time.

Where will all these groups be housed? The ISEMLR is currently refurbishing the HPC building (on UP’s LC de Villiers Sports Campus) to accommodate the ISEMLR headquarters, laboratories, and a clinical space for practitioners.

Once all the necessary relationships are successfully forged, this trans-disciplinary research and service delivery space will bring together researchers and health practitioners to ensure that research is based on real data and that research findings are rapidly translated into practice.

The Institute will house sports physicians, biomechanists, biokineticists, physiotherapists, and a wide range of other practitioners that can provide medical care to the public. These practitioners will help provide an income for the Institution as well as collect real data on every patient that comes to the Institute.

“The vision is to have a patient management system but also a data collection system. Day-to-day clinical practice then feeds data into several research projects,” says Dr Borresen, COO of the Institute. Research at the institute will use real world data and the practitioners will be able to use that research to help their patients; in a sort of positive feedback loop.

Dr Borresen and Prof Schwellnus hope to have the ISEMLR host postgraduate research students from various departments in the University, who will also be able to work closely with patients or practitioners.

Prof Schwellnus hopes to collaborate with a wide range of research groups, such as the newly formed Big Data Science Institute, the Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT), and geneticists at the University of Pretoria

See related researcher profiles, videos, infographic and gallery on the right sidebar.

UP’s new institute will promote sports excellence and #healthy living through research #UPSports

Health practitioners and scientists at a new UP institute will focus on five high-impact research areas in the field of Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research.

“At the moment, the University of Pretoria is strong in research about sports injuries, and illness and medical complications. We would like to grow the focus on noncommunicable diseases and how to get people more physically active. I will be working mainly in this area,” says Dr Jill Borresen, COO of the institute.

The first of these themes is the prevention, management and rehabilitation of patients with Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s) of lifestyle through patient-centred, comprehensive, lifestyle interventions. These interventions can include promoting physical activity to patients and encouraging them to participate in recreational sport.

For a second theme, the institute will focus on preventing musculoskeletal and other injuries in sports through non-surgical management and rehabilitation. This focus will include all physically active individuals participating in recreational sports. At the University of Pretoria, there are researchers with a proven track record of research and clinical work in this area of research. 

The institute will use the strengths of its existing infrastructure and staff to develop a strong research programme to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal and other injuries during exercise.​

Thirdly, the institute will research the broader context of sport and promotion of physical activity in society. These societal issues include ethics (e.g. doping in sport), legal (e.g. professional sport contracts, drugs in sport, risk of injuries and medical complications), sport management and economics (sport sponsorships), and education (promoting physical activity in schools and the broader community).

Researchers in the Faculties of LawEducationEconomics, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science are already active in these areas. Prof Schwellnus is already hard at work forging collaborations between these UP groups and other external, and international groups through the institute.

The fourth theme will focus on preventing and managing medical complications and illness in sports. Under this theme, Professor Schwellnus has implemeneted a screening and education programme at major sports events such as the Two Oceans Marathon and the Cape Town Cycle Tour.

“We are talking to organisers of other mass participation events as well, to see whether we can administer the screening programme there,” says Professor Schwellnus. “This will help us predict if there will be a health-related issue on the day of the race based on the risk factors.”

Finally, the institute will aim to enhance sports excellence in sports performance at the University of Pretoria. Not only is the University of Pretoria renowned for producing world-class athletes, it is also well recognised for its successful sporting club infrastructure.

The Institute for Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research (ISEMLR) will capitalise on the strengths of UP’s sporting culture and success to become a national and global leader in researching the elements that constitute sporting success.

See researcher profiles, videos, infographic and gallery on the right sidebar.

New research institute takes UP sports excellence to the next level #UPResearchMatters #UPSports

The University of Pretoria (UP) has an impressive track-record of sports excellence: over half of South African medallists at the recent Olympics and Commonwealth Games were assisted by UP. Now a new institute brings UP’s sports medicine researchers together under one roof.

Sporting success provides inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning in people’s lives. Success in the arena can uplift communities or nations, and society needs its sporting champions as heroes and role models. Sporting champions can act to unify a society and bring people together with a common sense of purpose and values and the Institute for Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research (ISEMLR) hopes to capitalise on this.

The University of Pretoria has a long and proud tradition of supporting sporting excellence through various research programmes and centres, most notably the High Performance Centre (HPC). The HPC has been supporting elite athletes since 2002, with a wide variety of national and international athletes coming to the centre for their training facilities, medical services, and nutritional and scientific expertise.

More than 50% of the South African medallists at recent Olympics and Commonwealth Games events were assisted by UP staff or facilities. The University also boasts a slew of elite athletes throughout its history and a highly competitive and successful sports club infrastructure.

One of the themes of the ISEMLR concerns sports performance, which is to build on UP’s rich history of excellence in sports performance research. The ISEMLR will achieve this by bringing researchers together under common themes.

The director of the Institute, Professor Martin Schwellnus, recently chaired an expert group assembled by the International Olympic Committee to consider the relationship between high training loads and sports injuries. This committee recently published two consensus papers covering their findings in detail. His experience in this research will contribute to the performance of UP’s already highly-rated athletes.

See related researcher profiles, videos, infographic and gallery on the right sidebar.

UP researchers will use #bigdata, sensor #technology and #genomics for #healthy, active lifestyles

Wearable fitness trackers and genetic differences between people can provide sport researchers at the University of Pretoria (UP) ISEMLR with #bigdata to understand and support #healthy, active lifestyles.

Prof Martin Schwellnus, Director of the Institute for Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research (ISEMLR), and Dr Jill Borresen, his COO, hope to add a new rigour to sports medicine and lifestyle research. Through the ISEMLR they plan to collaborate widely with different scientific disciplines and focus on data-driven science, which will allow new opportunities for innovation.

The ISEMLR hopes to incorporate three major technological enablers into their research: big data science, sensor technology and genomics technology.

With big data, or data-driven research, the ISEMLR will make data collection an integral part of their work, and use advanced data analysis and developments in machine learning to sift through that data for trends rather than conducting traditional, hypothesis-driven research. Over time this will become an invaluable resource for researchers and health practitioners alike, as data will be collected on every patient that passes through the institute.

Regarding sensor technology, the institute is in discussions with sensor researchers in UP’s Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and IT (EBIT), in hopes that the recent trend of small, low-powered sensors will lead a revolution in data collection and analysis for sports science. As an example, the ISEMLR is looking at using wearable technology during mass participation sports events, which could then be linked to health outcomes and even predict medical complications.

Finally, the ISEMLR will incorporate genomics technology to better understand sports performance, medical complications and injury recovery. They can do this by looking for genetic variations linked to injuries such as tendinopathy, or looking at the genetic variations linked to differences in muscle performance and behaviour.

Incorporating big data, sensor technology and genomics methods into sports exercise research is a novel approach in South Africa which will add rigour and potential for commercial innovation to research at the ISEMLR.

See related researcher profiles, videos, infographic and gallery on the right sidebar.

Prof Martin Schwellnus, Dr Jill Borresen

November 28, 2016

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Table of contents

Researchers
  • Professor Martin Schwellnus
    Professor Martin Schwellnus is the Director of the newly established Institute for Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research at the University of Pretoria, Director of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Research Center in South Africa, and a longstanding member of the IOC Medical Commission. He is also a specialist sports and exercise medicine physician who regularly consults with athletes of all levels.
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  • Dr Jill Borresen
    Dr Jill Borresen is the Chief Operations Officer of the Sport, Exercise Medicine and Lifestyle Research Institute, Dr Borresen oversees the design and construction of the Institute Headquarters, implements the Institute’s research strategy, establishes research collaborations with various stakeholders, promotes the Institute via various PR and media channels, and guides the Institute towards a sustainable funding model. She holds a PhD in Exercise Science and a degree in Architecture, and has represented South Africa in Archery, including participating at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games.

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