Research Shows Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Arlington clinic, and Dr. Ernst is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults hurt 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 necessity of preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially achieve that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are commonplace, frequently sidelining the players and impacting their team's chance at winning. One particular study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study in particular, all of the players got medical treatment. Additionally, 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 per month for the remaining three 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 twenty-four matches, scientists noted a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Moreover, that same group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be made an addition to sports training programs to effectively lessen the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you want to ensure more time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our Arlington office at (360) 659-8464 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.