Rehydrating Reggae Boyz

Audley Boyd, Assistant Editor - Sport

SAINTE-LUCE, Martinique:

Reggae Boyz physician, Dr Carlton Fraser, had to work overtime to get the players rehydrated and ready to go, for last night's opening Digicel Caribbean Cup finals match against Antigua and Barbuda, after a hectic travelling schedule.

The Boyz travelled for nearly 21 hours on Thursday to get from Kingston to Martinique, where the play-offs to decide the regional championship kicked off Friday night.

They got moving from around 3 a.m. to get to Miami, United States, where they had an over five-hour wait before making a connection that took the team to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The team had another layover, before departing near 9 p.m., and landed in Fort-de-France, Martinique, after 11 p.m. By the time the team got to its hotel, it was practically midnight.

"What I'm going to do to a lot of them is give them heat therapy to promote peripheral laser dilation and increase circulation to the periphery, which is what they need," Dr Fraser said. "We are also going to 'carb-load' them and that is why we are encouraging them to drink as much complex carb or fruit juices because they have been up from sleep deprivation, because we have been travelling from after 3 o'clock yesterday (Thursday) morning and we didn't get here until near midnight, so that is severe deprivation."

Integrated medicine

Dr Fraser, a trained surgeon who practises integrated medicine and has been working with the Jamaica team for years, explained how the body is affected when one travels this long by airplane and its detriment, in terms of one's ability to perform, as well as its effect on physical imbalance.

"The first thing we have to do is exhibit the awareness that these things do cause a problem," he pointed out, then, with rhetoric, asked, "what does a player do when he goes on a flight? Even the player himself believes that what he does is he goes on a unit that is moving and he relaxes and falls asleep. Because he's asleep he believes everything is fine, but how often does he sleep at 37,000 feet in the sky and moving at 500 miles per hour?

"That means all of your body's physiological systems have to go full blast to maintain you at that altitude because you start to have an altitudinal effect, just like when you are on the playing field in Mexico. So all of these things contribute to the physiological imbalances that you have coming off a plane, hypotency, that means your blood (level) falls rapidly," he added.

"Of course, you are going to come out in terms of detriment and traumatic effects because you have travelled in a confined space. That's why we say once you are travelling on a flight over two hours you should walk on the plane. Now it causes so much concern when you do that because of the so-called security aspects of flying. But you need to be doing that, because this morning a lot of players were complaining that they are very stiff, sore in their muscles, because they sat in one position for a long time, most of them sleeping. And, of course, you have to deal with the whole concept of fatigue, and that is why you have to supplement them."

He added: "Supplementation means that I'm going to give them B complexes. I'm also going to make sure that all their requirements are met, even potassium, even their electrolytes are adequately balanced, and of course, you have to get them rehydrated. So you have to get them drinking as much fluids as you possibly can and then you have to make sure that if they have any other symptoms - severe pains in the legs or soreness, spasms - you take care of all of that.

"Once you are satisfied with that and also see how they train for the first time, then you can say they are ready for the game."