Research Shows Chiropractic Care Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a good deal of sports injuries in our Mt Sterling office, and Dr. Tolson is usually able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and younger are hurt each year when playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults injured annually while taking part in sports-related activities, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of preventing these types of common injuries. One way to possible achieve that goal, as stated in a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are commonplace, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's likelihood of winning. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study particularly, all of the participants received medical treatment. In addition, half of them also engaged in chiropractic sessions at the rate of one session each week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one treatment a month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The remaining participants were given no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following twenty-four matches, specialists reported a lessened number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, that very group also missed fewer matches connected to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to effectively decrease the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to make sure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Mt Sterling office at (859) 499-1009 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.