Originally posted by Pillbusta:
The key guys that got hurt are older and on their second contracts. We have an old team that has logged an impossible number of miles over various long postseasons
If i was a betting man, my honest uneducated guess would be something like this.
I say uneducated guess because i am not a doctor, but I am a recreational pilot. Air travel has an effect on the body, so much so that different airlines change cabin pressure and air mixture to company standards, if you fly often enough you can actually feel this. I am not an airline pilot, i have never flown a pressurized airplane...but before 911 i was about an inch from working for Pan-Am and going down that road. Jet airplane's have something called Cabin Altitude, flights to Jamaca and Cayman for example often run slightly higher and mix in slightly more oxygen during the flight. Why? They want you happy and giddy when you land. Your average slog to NYC very well might be very different. They do this with cabin pressure, and that effects blood oxygen levels. Its not uncommon to have a slight hypoxia during longer flights (less oxygen in your blood, you feel sleepy), that "air" often starts out at hundreds of degrees before it is cooled ..so most the water vapor has been removed too. That can induce mild dehydration too.
If y'all remember TO back in the day had his own personal hyperbaric chamber? He used it to heal faster. That works by greatly increasing air pressure and without getting super technical it boosts the oxygen in your blood so your body has more opportunity to heal. The side effect of course is you also have more c02 in your blood as well, and you have to "wait" for that off gas out of your body. This is identical to scuba diving, and the general rule is wait 12-24 hours to dive after you get off a plane, and the rule you really do not want to break is wait 48 hours post dive (same as a hyperbaric chamber) to fly...or risk killing yourself.
So if i was an uneducated betting man, knowing flight crews already suffer their own health challenges from living in a 10 psi environment compared to the rest of us at 14.7, and assuming modern sports medicine probably adopted a TO style hyperbaric chamber recovery regiment...it kind of would make sense for the 49ers to have less opportunity to recover if they constantly have to fly out earlier the most other teams.
Every team is different, every training staff is different, but i would expect teams in middle America that use Hyperbaric cambers to show less injury down time. Especially considering HOURS between flights can matter so much.
