Sports Medicine Physician
Sport Medicine in San Francisco
Conquer pain and optimize performance with our board-certified Sports Medicine Physicians. Non-surgical treatments, injury prevention, and personalized care plans to help you achieve your active goals.
What is a Sports Medicine Physician?
Imagine life without limitations, where you can freely pursue your athletic passions or daily activities. Sports Medicine Physicians are your partners in achieving that freedom. These highly trained medical professionals are not just doctors; they guide you in maintaining an active, healthy lifestyle. With expertise that spans across internal medicine and sports medicine, our physicians are re highly trained medical professionals with specialized expertise in:
- Preventing injuries: Through comprehensive evaluations and personalized guidance, they help you stay ahead of potential issues.
- Diagnosing sports-related conditions: From acute sprains to chronic overuse injuries, they pinpoint the root cause of your pain.
- Treating injuries non-operatively: Utilizing advanced techniques like ultrasound-guided injections, shockwave therapy, and regenerative medicine, they promote natural healing without surgery.
- Rehabilitating you to peak performance: They design customized recovery programs that get you back to your sport or activity stronger than before.
Why Sports Medicine Is Important for Athletes
Athletes, from weekend warriors to professional competitors, push their bodies to the limit. Pushing limits brings great rewards, but it also carries inherent risks. This is where sports medicine comes in, playing a crucial role in not just treating injuries but also optimizing performance and preventing future setbacks. Here’s why sports medicine is vital for athletes:
1. Injury Prevention
- Early Detection & Intervention
Sports medicine physicians have the expertise to identify potential problems before they become full-blown injuries. Through comprehensive physical exams, movement assessments, and advanced diagnostics like ultrasound, they can detect muscle imbalances, weaknesses, and biomechanical flaws that contribute to injuries. Early intervention with targeted exercises, corrective strategies, and proper training techniques can significantly reduce injury risk.
- Personalized Injury Prevention Plans
Athletes have diverse needs and risk factors. Sports medicine physicians create personalized plans based on individual sport, training intensity, and biomechanics. This might include injury-specific warm-up and cool-down routines, strength training programs to address weaknesses, and recommendations for proper equipment and recovery strategies.
2. Faster and More Effective Injury Recovery
- Accurate Diagnosis
Prompt and accurate diagnosis is crucial for optimal healing. Sports medicine physicians possess the knowledge and experience to pinpoint the exact cause of an injury, ensuring the right treatment is applied quickly. This can significantly reduce recovery time and prevent complications.
- Non-Operative Treatment Options
Surgery isn’t necessary in over 90% of cases. Sports medicine physicians prioritize conservative approaches like physical therapy, injections, bracing, and rehabilitation to get athletes back on their feet faster and minimize the risk of post-surgical complications.
- Multidisciplinary Collaboration
Sports medicine physicians often work alongside athletic trainers, physical therapists, and other specialists, creating a comprehensive team approach to recovery. This ensures all aspects of healing are addressed, from pain management to regaining strength and flexibility.
3. Enhanced Performance
- Biomechanical Analysis & Optimization
Sports medicine physicians analyze an athlete’s movement patterns and identify areas for improvement. This might involve correcting imbalances, improving flexibility, and optimizing technique. By addressing these issues, athletes can move more efficiently, reduce energy expenditure, and potentially improve their performance.
- Nutritional Counseling
Proper nutrition is essential for optimal performance and recovery. Sports medicine physicians can provide personalized guidance on nutrition plans that fuel training, aid recovery, and support overall health and well-being.
- Mental Conditioning
Sports are as much mental as they are physical. Sports medicine physicians can provide mental conditioning techniques to help athletes manage stress, anxiety, and performance pressure, ultimately enhancing their mental toughness and focus.
Beyond these key benefits, sports medicine also offers:
- Pre-participation physicals: Ensuring athletes are safe to participate in their sport and identifying any underlying conditions that need attention.
- Return-to-play guidance: Helping athletes safely and gradually transition back to their sport after an injury.
- Education and resources: Providing athletes with the knowledge and tools to make informed decisions about their health and performance.
A Holistic Approach to Your Well-Being
Our Sports Medicine Physicians adopt a comprehensive perspective when it comes to your health. Understanding that issues like a swollen knee can stem from various causes, they leverage their extensive training in both primary care and sports medicine to evaluate and treat the full spectrum of potential underlying issues. This dual expertise ensures a thorough assessment of your condition, considering all body systems that might be involved, and provides a tailored treatment plan that addresses your unique needs.
Specialized in Non-Operative Solutions
Comprehensive Sports Medicine Treatment
We are proud to offer a wide range of treatments and services tailored to the specific needs of active individuals and athletes.
Services Offered:
- Our services include, but are not limited to:
Diagnostic Musculoskeletal Ultrasound: Advanced imaging techniques for accurate diagnosis. - Ultrasound-Guided Procedures: Precision-guided treatments for targeted relief.
- Regenerative Medicine: Innovative therapies to promote your body’s natural healing processes.
- Injection Therapy: Including steroids, hyaluronic acid, and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatments.
- Shock Wave Therapy: Utilizing Extracorporeal Pulse Activation Technology for pain relief.
- Comprehensive Support Services: From joint drainage and trigger point dry-needling to medication prescriptions, bracing, and pre-participation physicals, we offer a full suite of services to support your recovery and preventive care needs.
Conditions We Treat:
- Acute injuries: Sprains, strains, fractures, dislocations
- Overuse injuries: Tendinitis, bursitis, plantar fasciitis
- Joint pain: Arthritis, meniscal tears, shoulder instability
- Concussions and other head injuries
- Exercise-related issues: Muscle imbalances, overuse syndromes
Personalized Sports Medicine Services
Initial Visit
Return Visit
Subsequent sessions, lasting between 30-45 minutes, are designed to monitor your progress and refine your therapeutic program. This includes exercise progression, review of diagnostic studies, and exploration of additional treatment options. For added convenience, we also offer video visits for follow-ups when in-person visits are not feasible.
Ready to Get Back to Your Active Life?
Schedule an appointment with our sports medicine physicians today!
We’re committed to helping you achieve your full potential and live an active, pain-free life.
Avid Sports Medicine Physicians
Dr. Veronica Jow, MD
Sports Medicine Physician
Dr. Jow is the founder and operator of Avid Sports Medicine. She created Avid as a space where patients could receive care for ALL aspects of movement-related injury under one roof.
Dr. Jow is a medical doctor who holds board certifications in Internal Medicine and Sports Medicine. While practicing sports medicine for the past 10 years in the Bay Area, she has taken care of the complete range of patients, from elite athletes, as the Associate Team Physician at UC Berkeley, to underserved patients, as a sports medicine specialist in Kaiser Richmond. Whatever the population, she strives to empower patients to recover through empathy, education, and partnership.
Our other specialties
Athletic Training
Athletic Trainers are certified healthcare professional who specialize in sports medicine.
Physical Therapy
Physical Therapists are movement experts who help people improve and maintain function and achieve goals.
Chiropractic
Chiropractors are healthcare practitioners with specific training in the musculoskeletal system, the combination of our bones, muscles and joints.
Sports Massage
Sports Massage is targeted bodywork and manual manipulation with the specific goal of improving athletic function.
Sports Medicine
in San Francisco
Avid Sports Medicine offers sports medicine services to neighborhoods in San Francisco, East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, and The Peninsula.