Studies Show Chiropractic Care Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a lot of sports injuries in our San Angelo clinic, and Dr. Pittman is often able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are hurt each year when playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt every year while participating in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of minimizing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, as stated in 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, often 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 reduce these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study specifically, every one of the participants was given medical treatment. In addition, half of them also were given chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one session a month for the final 3 months of the study. The other half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

After twenty-four matches, scientists reported a diminished amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that same group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to effectively lessen the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you want to ensure greater time is spent on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our San Angelo office at (325) 223-9355 and make 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.