Studies Show Chiropractic Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a lot of sports injuries in our Kettering office, and Dr. Poelking is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults hurt annually while taking part in sports-related activities, according to 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 way to potentially realize that goal, as reported by a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive regular chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, often sidelining the players and affecting 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 particularly, every one of the participants received medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 session per week for the first six weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one session each month for the remaining three months of the study. The other participants were given no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

Following twenty-four matches, scientists reported a reduced amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, that same group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to effectively reduce the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to make sure more time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our Kettering office at (937) 299-2900 and schedule 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.