Studies Show Chiropractic Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a lot of sports injuries in our New York clinic, and Dr. Valente is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults hurt annually while taking part 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 preventing these types of common injuries. One approach to possible realize that goal, as stated in a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, often sidelining the players and impacting their team's chance at winning. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them in the game.

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

After 24 matches, scientists reported a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that very group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you want to make sure greater time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our New York office at (917) 338-7917 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.