Chiropractic Helps Prevent Lower Limb Injuries for Athletes

Chiropractic Helps Prevent Lower Limb Injuries for Athletes

When doing sports that demand a lot of lower body motion, like football, soccer, and basketball, it's not at all uncommon to sustain some type of injury to your lower extremities. Between pulled hamstrings, sprained ankles, knee injuries, and more, many people have found themselves sidelined. Dr. Ernst has seen all of these problems in our Arlington patients. The good news is, chiropractic adjustments can help prevent some of these injuries from happening and research proves it.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps With Sports Injuries & Recovery

Dr. Ernst keeps current with all of the recent scientific research, and in a paper published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, researchers from Macquarie University in Australia studied 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers. Roughly half were placed in a control group and the other half were put in a treatment group that received sports chiropractic care at regular intervals. During the first six weeks, this meant getting care once every week. The following three months consisted of an adjustment every two weeks before reducing those to one visit monthly for the final three months of the study.

Researchers noted that there was a "significant" decrease in the number of leg strains the players received in the treatment group when compared to the control. Furthermore, they observed that the subjects who engaged in chiropractic also had fewer weeks of missed practice and games as a result of non-contact knee injuries. This led them to conclude that sports chiropractic intervention should be added to "the current best practice management."

Every major sports team in the US and the US Olympic Team has chiropractors on staff for their athletes, because they know that chiropractic really works. If you live near our office in Arlington and would like to see if Dr. Ernst can help you boost your performance or reduce sports injuries, give our office a call today at (360) 659-8464 for an appointment.

Dr. Ernst Can Help Patients Find Relief From Sports Injuries and Recover Faster

If you're suffering with severe pain, Dr. Ernst and our staff are here to help you heal. Give our Arlington office a call today at (360) 659-8464 for an appointment today.

Original Study

Hoskins W, Pollard H. 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 2010;11(64).