Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Loveland clinic, and Kauffman Chiropractic is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below 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, as reported by statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of minimizing these sorts of common injuries. One way 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 traumas are commonplace, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's chance at winning. One particular study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study specifically, every one of the players received medical treatment. In addition, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment per week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one treatment per month for the final 3 months of the study. The remaining participants had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

Following twenty-four matches, researchers noted a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, 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 quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to ensure more time is dedicated on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Loveland office at (513) 444-4529 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.