Studies Show Chiropractic Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Juneau, AK office, and Dr. Messerschmidt is usually able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults injured every year while engaged in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of preventing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to possible realize that goal, according to a study released 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 winning. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see how well chiropractic could reduce these injuries and help keep them playing.

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

Following 24 matches, specialists noted a lessened number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Moreover, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated 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 effectively decrease the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to make sure greater time is spent on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Juneau, AK office at (907) 789-1344 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.