Research Shows Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a large number of sports injuries in our Estero, Bonita Springs clinic, and Dr. Green is often able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and younger are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults injured each year while participating in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to possible realize that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive regular chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are commonplace, frequently sidelining the players and affecting their team's chance at securing a win. One particular study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study particularly, every one of the volunteers got medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also engaged in chiropractic treatments at the rate of one session per week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one session each month for the remaining three months of the study. The remaining participants had no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

Following twenty-four matches, specialists noticed a reduced amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Moreover, that same group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to effectively lessen the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to ensure more time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our Estero, Bonita Springs office at (239) 495-1166 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.