Research Shows Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a lot of sports injuries in our Depew office, and Dr. Palmer is usually able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults hurt annually while participating in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the importance of minimizing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially achieve that goal, as stated in a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, often sidelining the players and impacting their team's odds of winning. One specific study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see how well chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them in the game.

Research Supports Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study in particular, all of the volunteers received medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also engaged in chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one session each month for the final three months of the study. The remaining half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

Following twenty-four matches, researchers noticed a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Moreover, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to effectively decrease the amount of leg injuries.

Dr. Palmer Can Help People Find Relief From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Faster

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to make sure greater time is spent on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Depew office at (716) 668-2225 and make an appointment today. We will do our best to keep you in the game!

References

• Hoskins, W, & Pollard, H. (2010, April 8). The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back pain, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian Rules footballers: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 11(64), doi:10.1186/1471-2474-11-64
• Misra, A. (2014, March 17). Common sports injuries: Incidence and average charges. Department of Health & Human Services.
• Stanford Children’s Hospital. (n.d.). Sports injury statistics.