Research Shows Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a lot of sports injuries in our Parma, Middleburg Heights office, and Baker Chiropractic Wellness Center is usually able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are hurt each year when playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults injured each year while engaged in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of minimizing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially achieve that goal, as reported by a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are commonplace, often sidelining the players and impacting 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 cut down on these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study specifically, every one of the participants was given medical treatment. In addition, half of them also engaged in chiropractic sessions at the rate of one session per week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one treatment per month for the remaining three months of the study. The remaining half were given no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic.

After 24 matches, specialists reported 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 connected to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to effectively decrease the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you want to ensure more time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our Parma, Middleburg Heights office at (440) 888-6979 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.