Studies Show Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a lot of sports injuries in our Smyrna, GA office, and Dr. Weinberg is usually able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults injured each year while engaged 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 necessity of preventing these types of common injuries. One way to possible 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 injuries are common, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's likelihood of securing a win. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study specifically, all of the volunteers was given medical treatment. In addition, half of them also were given chiropractic treatments at the rate of one session each week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the following three months, and one session each month for the last 3 months of the study. The other participants had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic.

After 24 matches, researchers noted a reduced number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Additionally, that same group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to dramatically decrease the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to ensure greater time is spent on the field versus on the sidelines, call our Smyrna, GA office at (678) 214-4445 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.