Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a lot of sports injuries in our Cary office, and Dr. Gugerli is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 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 hurt each year while engaged in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the necessity of minimizing these sorts of common injuries. One way to potentially achieve that goal, as stated in a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive regular chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are commonplace, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's odds of securing a win. 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.

For this study specifically, every one of the volunteers got medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of 1 session each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one treatment per month for the last three months of the study. The remaining participants were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

After 24 matches, researchers noticed a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Additionally, that very group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you want to make sure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Cary office at (919) 589-0909 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.