Studies Show Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a lot of sports injuries in our Anchorage office, and Dr. Mulholland is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are hurt each year when playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt every year while participating in sports-related activities, according to statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the necessity of preventing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, as reported by a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, frequently 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 if chiropractic could reduce these injuries and help keep them in the game.

Research Supports Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study particularly, every one of the participants got medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of one session each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one session per month for the final 3 months of the study. The other group had no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic.

After 24 matches, specialists noticed a diminished 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 lessen the quantity of leg injuries.

Dr. Mulholland Can Help Patients Find Comfort From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Faster

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to make sure greater time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, 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.