Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Asheville clinic, and Dr. Myers is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt annually 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 approach to possible realize that goal, as stated in a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic care.

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

Research Proves Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

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

Following twenty-four matches, researchers reported a lessened amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Furthermore, 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 dramatically lessen the number of leg injuries.

Dr. Myers Can Help Patients 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 Asheville office at (828) 676-0963 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.