Jocks, or jockstraps, are also known as athletic supporters. This equipment is designed to hold a cup over your groin area, which protects your genitals, while allowing freedom of movement for playing sports. A guy should wear a jock equipped with a protective cup to play basketball, according to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. Wearing an jock with a cup helps prevent testicular injuries, and complications that arise from these injuries.
Contact Sports
Basketball is a contact sport, unlike swimming or running, because players are in contact with on another and with other objects. Basketball involves. According to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, more injuries occur while playing sports that involve contact and collisions. A guy should wear a jock to play basketball, because other players and other objects may inadvertently collide with your testicles and cause minor or severe testicular injuries.
Minor Injury Prevention
Wearing a jock while playing basketball can prevent minor testicular injuries, which involve temporary discomfort. Your testicles hang outside of your body, and unlike other organs, they are not protected by muscle and bone. Therefore, your testicles are vulnerable to particularly painful collisions with other objects. Although spongy material in your testicles helps prevent long-term damage from most collisions, even light collisions may produce significant pain. Pain nausea may last for several minutes after impact.
Severe Injury Prevention
You can avoid severe testicle injuries, such as testicular torsion and rupturing a testicle, by wearing a jock while playing basketball. One of your testicles can twist around and lose blood circulation. Torsion requires immediate medical attention, so a doctor can try to manually twist your testicle back around. You may also need emergency surgery to avoid losing that testicle. Forceful direct blows to your groin can also rupture at testicle if you do not wear a jock in basketball. Testicular rupture produces immediate and excruciating pain. Your scrotum swells as blood leaks into your scrotum, and produces extreme pain. Nausea and vomiting may accompany the pain from a rupture.
Complication Prevention
Wearing a jock while playing basketball helps you avoid the complications that arise from testicular injuries. Torsion injuries can lead to testicular infections and other problems even after you correct the problem. Your testicle can atrophy, shrink and require removal, even months after correcting a torsion injury. Your testicles produce male hormones and sperm. Wearing a jock in basketball helps you avoid lifelong hormonal imbalances, sexual dysfunction and infertility that may results from testicular injuries.
References
- Lucile Packard Children's' Hospital at Stanford: Sports Injury Statistics
- TeensHealth.org: Testicular Injuries; T. Ernesto Figueroa; September 2010
- Pub Med: Testicular Torsion
- Cleveland Clinic: Disorders of The Testes
- National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases: Sports Injuries
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