DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I am a freshman playing girls' basketball. I have been told that weightlifting might increase my strength and ability to make the team. I fear that it will only make me muscle-bound and unfeminine. Will it? - R.K.
ANSWER: This business of weightlifting making a person, man or woman, muscle-bound is hokum, but it's an idea that dies hard.Weightlifting is OK for women as well as men, for basketball players or those in any other sport. Developing strength is different than body-building. There, specific musculature is developed for the purpose of creating well-defined body profiles that an ordinary person might consider undesirable. I'm sure this is the basis of your fears.
You are exercising for strength to help you become a good basketball player. Women by nature have less muscular strength than do men, especially in the arms and shoulders. You can strengthen those muscles without developing a male profile. Men use their plentiful male hormone testosterone to do that.
I can hear you asking, what about the male hormone that females make naturally? Yes, women do make it but only in minute quantities - from a fiftieth to a hundredth the amount of male production. Go ahead and weightlift.
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I have worked for a large health club. Physiologists here have always told me to take the pulse at the carotid artery in the neck. Most people can locate it most easily there. But I have read literature that discourages the neck site. Is there validity to this warning? - D.P.
ANSWER: The pulse is accessible in many body areas. You can even feell it on the chest right over the heart, especially after vigorous exercise. At that point, you get the actual heartbeat, but that is the very same thing as the pulse at the wrist or anywhere else. The pulse is nothing more than the pulsatile wave transmitted down every body artery from the heart's pumping rhythm.
Some do have trouble with wrist pulse taking if their arteries lie deeper in tissue. Neck arteries are so large and so close to the surface that almost anyone can feel the pulse there.
Now, as to the warning. The neck artery does lie close to the surface and is supplied with nerves that activate reflexes in the heart. So you must be careful with pulse taking there. In fact, pressing strongly against the carotids can temporarily slow the heart, even stop it as part of this reflex action. That is rare, and can be avoided altogether by being sure to use a gentle touch. Don't dig into the neck tissue, merely press the fingers over the area lightly. Nothing bad will happen this way.
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: Is there truth to the advice to throw through pain? Last summer I felt pain in my pitching arm. I was told to pitch anyway. I did and am paying now. - L.L.
ANSWER: There's not a shred of truth to the idea. The shoulder is the body's most mobile joint, but it pays a price for being able to move in so many directions. The price is a lessened stability, and that leads to all sorts of problems, for the most part strains.
Never throw through pain. When your present pain slackens you should begin a careful rehab program with light weights. And you should continue with that program so that next season your shoulder will be able to withstand the rigors of throwing with force, for which no arm was created. After you build up strength, you can add endurance training to help you last the required innings.
DEAR DR. DONOHUE: What is your opinion of chelation therapy for treatment of artery clearing. I am still uncertain about going through the series of sessions to have this done. - Mrs. D.E.K.
ANSWER: Chelation (key-LAY-shun) is from the Greek word for claw. One chelator is EDTA, an acide with a long name which when introduced into the blood swoops down, so to speak, grabbing hold of undesired minerals the way a hawk claws mice victims. In fact, EDTA is used in just this way to treat mercury and lead poisoning. The molecules of those mineral shave a way of clinging to the EDTA, which then carries them out of the blood harmlessly.
The idea struck others that if EDTA could rid the body of lead and mercury excess, why could it not also remove the calcium part of artery buildup that blocks circulation? Enter controversy.
There has never been convincing evidence that EDTA works this way. And questions arise. How, for example, would EDTA selectively remove calcium from artery buildup and yet spare the vital calcium in bones? Furthermore, calcium makes up only a small part of artery buildup, most of which is cholesterol, fats, platelets and a sticky protein, fibrin. EDTA doesn't touch these substances.
Serious objections arise from the potential for side effects. Complications have occurred during such chelation.