Research Shows Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Prescott clinic, and Weary Chiropractic Clinic is usually able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt each year while participating in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the importance of minimizing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in routine chiropractic care.

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

For this study particularly, every one of the players received medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of 1 session each week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the following three months, and one session per month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The remaining group were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

Following 24 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 related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to ensure more time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our Prescott office at (928) 778-2227 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.