Chiropractic and Sports Injuries

We encounter a lot of sports injuries in our Estero clinic, and Chiropractic Care & Rehab Center is usually able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults hurt every year 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 necessity of minimizing these types of common injuries. One approach to possible realize that goal, as reported by a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are commonplace, frequently sidelining the players and impacting their team's odds of securing a win. One specific study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if 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. Furthermore, 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 next three months, and one session per month for the final three months of the study. The remaining participants had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

Following 24 matches, specialists noticed a reduced number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, that same group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to make sure greater time is spent on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Estero 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.