Research Shows Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a large number of sports injuries in our Rockville clinic, and Dr. Aazami is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and younger are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults injured each year while engaged in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the importance of preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One way to possible achieve 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 common, 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 diminish these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study particularly, all of the players was given medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also engaged in chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 session each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one session each month for the last three months of the study. The remaining group were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following 24 matches, researchers reported a reduced amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, that very group also missed fewer matches connected to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic ought to be made an addition to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to ensure greater time is dedicated on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Rockville office at (240) 221-2666 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.