Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a good deal of sports injuries in our Kettering clinic, and Dr. Poelking is generally able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults hurt each year while participating in sports-related activities, according to statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the necessity of preventing these types of common injuries. One way to possible achieve 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 injuries are common, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's odds of securing a win. One specific study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them in the game.

Research Supports Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study particularly, all of the players got medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of one treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one treatment a month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The other half had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

After 24 matches, scientists noticed a reduced amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Moreover, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated 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 dramatically lessen the amount of leg injuries.

Dr. Poelking Can Help Clients Find Relief From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Faster

If you or your child plays sports and you want to make sure greater time is dedicated on the field as opposed to 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.