Research Shows Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a good deal of sports injuries in our Sunnyvale & San Francisco clinic, and Dr. Stern is generally able to help these athletes. Stanford Childrens 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 close to 2 million adults hurt every year while engaged in sports-related activities, according to statistics compiled 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 stated in a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are commonplace, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's chance at securing a win. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic care could cut down on these injuries and help keep them playing.

Research Shows Chiropractic Care Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study in particular, all of the volunteers was given medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly treatments for the following three months, and one treatment per month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The remaining half had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following 24 matches, researchers noticed a reduced amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Furthermore, that same group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to dramatically decrease the number of leg injuries.

Dr. Stern Can Help Patients Find Comfort From Sports Injuries & Help You Heal Faster

If you or your child plays sports and you want to ensure more time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our Sunnyvale & San Francisco office at (415) 308-7636 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.