Premier League - Saha turns to leeches for relief
Eurosport - Thu, 02 Sep 11:20:00 2010
Everton striker Louis Saha has turned to leeches in a bid to solve his chronic knee problems.
The France international has been dogged by injury throughout his career but now appears to have found a solution in old-fashioned remedial methods.
The 32-year-old visited relatives in the Caribbean and found the leeches, whose sucking acts as an anti-inflammatory, to be beneficial to his knee.
He told The Sun: "I went to visit my grandparents in Guadeloupe and I put leeches on my swollen knees.
"Since then I've had a knee that is not quite right but given what happened to my ligaments I have to accept it.
"It swells up less and I feel fine now."
Saha is set to win his 19th international cap when France play Belarus in a Euro 2012 qualifier on Friday – the first time he has appeared for his country since injuring himself in a friendly against Greece nearly four years ago.
“My luck has been terrible in the past,” he added. “I would be fine for six months, then the day the France squad would be announced I’d get injured. It has been hard to take. I would not wish a similar fate on anyone and I have struggled to overcome these setbacks.
“But I’m well prepared both mentally and physically now. I have the legs and hunger of a 20-year-old.”
It is not the first time Premier League players have turned to alternative medical treatments to recover from injury.
Arsenal forward Robin van Persie’s decision to visit a doctor in Belgrade who reportedly massages horses' placental fluid on to affected areas made headlines in November last year.
It later emerged that Manchester City’s Pablo Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany and Nigel de Jong, along with several Liverpool players had all received or were planning to receive the treatment too.
Comment 1 - 20 of 20
most footballers are married to leeches anyway, so a little relief from one isn't unusual or big news is it?
SUCKER !!!!! Haha
All this money and what do they get??? LEECHES!!! Sorry i just find that quite funny :)
@albionstreet2b
Notice all the thumbs down? Time to stop posting the not funny slightly racist jokes don't you think.
albionstreet it is difficult not to look down at you and call you that, lol
albion street are you trying to be a bit racist or something?
what up with his golden hair. he wants to distinguish himself from the others.he wants to show that he stands out. but he is just like hesky. hesky has his fats while saha has his golden hair
Mathew comment 15 its maggots that eat dead flesh and leeches suck blood or fluids
He is still a class act solets stop all this nonsense everybody
how do leaches help a swollen knee? i though they ate away the rotten flesh from an infected wound, but by the sounds of it saha does have any wounds?
I guess some people only believe something if it's published in a text book....
albiostreet, really showing your intelligence there mate. Nothing to do with do-gooder bandwagon jumping, just plain common f***ing sense.
hav you got any leeches for this
6.He should move to Liverpool, we are owned by the two biggest leeches in the world
From Shcooby, on Thu 2 Sep 12:37PM
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Thanks for that. Made me laugh :-)
hmmm.....does anyone know where I can get fantastic items like the ones shown backed up by a respected broadcasting company. I can't seem to find any anywhere. Oh well, guess i'll just have to buy stuff instead....
After watching Saha come on for Everton against Wolves it seems he left his 20-year-old hunger and legs in the changing room and used the legs of a pensioner. No hunger, no passion and no desire... once great now living on past glory... time to move him on...
He should move to Liverpool, we are owned by the two biggest leeches in the world
The reason we've turned away from such treatments is there's little reproducible evidence to support their usage. Leeches however are used in other branches of conventional medicine eg to promote the drainage of blood from reattached digits. It is possible that the leeches have removed some of the excess inflammatory fluid but they won't treat an underlying serious problem with ligaments or knee instability.
Maybe someone should actually do a randomised control trial into their effectiveness in this area? :-)
Albionstreet you retarded bigot, leeches and maggots are routinely used in the NHS to treat swelling, leg ulcer debridement etc. This is not savage witchdoctoring as you imply, just the modern use of ancient techniques. Just cos something is old doesn't mean it doesn't work (this is especially true of Whiskey!!)
Good to know footballers are now turning not only to classical medicine for their ailments. The idea of always going under a knife to deal with an injury is not always the most efficient way to deal with injuries. There are many techniques (though of traditional medicine), that effectively deal with injuries better, quicker and in the long-run which are hardly exploited by modern medicine. Maybe it's high time for specialists in sports medicine to pay more attention to these exotic techniques and possibly refine them if required!
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