Chiropractic Helps Prevent Lower Limb Injuries for Athletes

When performing sports that require a lot of lower body movement, like football, soccer, and basketball, it's not uncommon to sustain some type of injury to your hips or legs. Between pulled hamstrings, sprained ankles, knee injuries, and more, many players have found themselves sidelined. Dr. Ernst has seen all of these problems in our Arlington, WA patients. Fortunately, chiropractic care can help prevent some of these injuries from occurring and research proves it.

Dr. Ernst keeps up-to-date with all of the latest scientific research, and in a report 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 decreasing those to one visit monthly for the final three months of the study.

Researchers noted that there was a "significant" difference in the number of lower limb strains the players received in the treatment group when compared to the control. In addition, 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 organization 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 practice in Arlington, WA 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.

Study Information

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).