"Boomeritis" sweeping the nation.

• Position: Athletic Arena; Baby Boom sports injuries

Sports-related mishaps among baby boomers have increased about 33% since the early 1990s, rising from 276,000 to 365,000 hospital emergency room-treated cases. This jump, which resulted from 16 popular sports activities, is due to the fact that today's older generation refuses to act "old," or remain sedentary. Physical fitness is of paramount importance to this active group, who are not content with "tame" exercise. They can be found testing their limits through rock climbing, snowboarding, roller blading, and bungee jumping--thus prompting the term "boomeritis," baby boomers who sustain injuries in the pursuit of fitness and eternal youth.

The famous are not immune either, as many politicians have suffered the effects. While president, Bill Clinton, a jogger, slipped on a step and tore his quadriceps tendon (the tissue that connects the thigh muscle to the knee), and required surgery to reattach it. That same year, 1997, avid runner and then-governor of Texas George W. Bush underwent surgery to repair an injury to a knee ligament. Moreover, former Vice Pres. Al Gore ruptured his Achilles tendon playing basketball.

"For many baby boomers, sports injuries are a rite of passage into middle age. A generation of fitness buffs now in their 40s and 50s has run headlong into the [obstacles] of time and their own mortality. They are tearing ligaments, twisting ankles, shearing shoulder muscles, all in a determined effort to forestall aging," states Elton Strauss, Chief of Orthopedic Trauma and Adult Reconstructive Surgery, Mount Sinai Hospital Center, New York.

After the age of 40, the body's muscles begin to atrophy; by...