Cheese? Urine? Hurt Athletes Try It All
Cheese wraps, urine poultices, cell cures — when it comes to injuries, elite athletes can be game for some pretty out-there therapies.
That propensity came to light this week when U.S. Alpine skiing star Lindsey Vonn, widely predicted to be the "It Girl" of the Vancouver Games, announced she had been wrapping her right leg in cheese — a European curd cheese — to treat a deep bruise that could stand between her and Olympic glory.
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The therapy, from which the U.S. Olympic team's chief doctor quickly distanced himself, was administered in Austria. That's where Vonn sustained her injury and where the curd cheese, topfen, is apparently hailed for anti-inflammatory properties.
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There doesn't appear to be any scientific evidence to suggest the cheese has those or any other medicinal powers. PubMed.gov, an online database of published medical studies maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, draws a blank in a search for "topfen."
But that hasn't stopped other members of the U.S. ski team from trying the cure, which is also, a Google search reveals, used to treat mastitis, a painful inflammation of breast tissue that sometimes afflicts breastfeeding women.
"I don't have a lot of experience with it. I know a lot of the athletes on the U.S. ski team . . . have had a good experience with it," Dr. Bill Sterrett, the team's physician, said with no audible note of cynicism Wednesday.
Sterrett certainly wouldn't be the first physician looking after athletes to be asked to administer, endorse or at least oversee a therapy that's not taught in medical schools.
"I've heard of stranger," Dr. Bob McCormack, chief medical officer for the Canadian Olympic team, said Thursday when asked about Vonn's cheese nostrum.
"I remember one of our athletes coming to a previous Games, a young athlete who was told by her coach, for her sprained ankle, what she needed to do was urinate in a rag and wrap her ankle in the urine-soaked rag."
"The idea was the uric acid would drain out the swelling. That's an example of something that's been used in Eastern Europe, a little bit more in the past," said McCormack, who is an orthopedic surgeon from Vancouver.
McCormack said while he sees no reason why poultices of curd cheese or the urine equivalent of a mustard plaster would help speed recovery of a bruised shin or a sprained ankle, he doesn't object if the remedy isn't going to make the injury worse or trip a positive doping test.
"For me, the issue is, 'Will it do harm to the athlete and is it performance enhancing from the WADA perspective?' he said, referring to the World Anti-Doping Agency. "Cheese curd falls into neither of the those (categories)."
"I can't see it doing any harm and if the athlete believes in it, I am OK with it," he added, noting there are lots of such remedies in use.
The willingness of Sterrett and McCormack to go along with treatments that seem at odds with evidence-based medicine probably lies in the latter's comment about an athlete's faith in a given remedy.
People who treat elite athletes agree the placebo effect is strong in this highly motivated group of individuals.
Sometimes, though, the remedies they latch on to aren't as benign as curd cheese and urine soaked rags.
Dr. Harm Kuipers, a physician and professor of exercise physiology at the University of Maastrict in the Netherlands, once treated a cyclist who sought Kuipers' help when he developed symptoms of having over-trained.
There was no obvious explanation for his decline in performance and the problem was a mystery until the man noted in passing that his symptoms started around the time he had what he called a "cell cure."
From what Kuipers could tell, the man had had a series of injections of some unidentified animal proteins. After the first, he felt fine. After the second, he felt a bit uncomfortable. After the third, the man told Kuipers, he felt very sick and actually thought he was going to die.
"I said, 'Well, congratulations, you had an anaphylactic shock,"' Kuipers said, referring to a form of severe allergic reaction that can be fatal.
Said Kuipers: "I've seen and heard a lot of strange and crazy things."