Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a good deal of sports injuries in our Rochester Hills, MI office, and Dr. Dalton is usually able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults injured each 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 common injuries. One way to potentially realize that goal, according to a study published 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 securing a win. One particular study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see how well chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them playing.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study specifically, every one of the players was given medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also engaged in chiropractic sessions at the rate of one treatment per week for the first six weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one treatment a month for the final 3 months of the study. The remaining half had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

After twenty-four matches, scientists reported a lessened number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to effectively reduce the number of leg injuries.

Dr. Dalton Can Help Patients Find Comfort From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Quicker

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 sidelines, call our Rochester Hills, MI office at (248) 977-7039 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.