Research Shows Chiropractic Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a large number of sports injuries in our Gadsden, AL clinic, and Gadsden Family Chiropractic is usually able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and younger are hurt each year when playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults injured 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 minimizing these sorts of common injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, as reported by a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in routine chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are commonplace, frequently sidelining the players and affecting their team's likelihood of winning. One specific study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them in the game.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study in particular, all of the participants got medical treatment. In addition, half of them also were given chiropractic treatments at the rate of one session per week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one session per month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The other half had no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

After twenty-four matches, specialists reported a lessened number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to dramatically decrease the number of leg injuries.

Gadsden Family Chiropractic Can Help Patients Find Relief From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Faster

If you or your child are active in sports and you want to ensure greater time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our Gadsden, AL office at (256) 543-3033 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.