Research Shows Chiropractic Care Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a good deal of sports injuries in our Anchorage office, and Dr. Mulholland is generally able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and younger are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults injured annually while participating 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 necessity of minimizing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, according to a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic care.

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

For this study particularly, all of the volunteers was given medical treatment. In addition, half of them also were given chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment per week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one session per month for the final 3 months of the study. The other half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following 24 matches, scientists reported a reduced number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Moreover, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to effectively lessen the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you want to ensure more time is spent on the field versus on the sidelines, call our Anchorage office at (907) 770-5700 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.