Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Effective at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a good deal of sports injuries in our Noblesville clinic, and Dr. Dahlager is often able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the close to 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 necessity of preventing these sorts of common injuries. One approach to possible achieve that goal, according to a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, frequently sidelining the players and impacting their team's chance at securing a win. 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 in the game.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study specifically, all of the volunteers received medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one treatment a month for the final three months of the study. The remaining participants had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic.

After twenty-four matches, researchers noted a diminished amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Moreover, that same 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 dramatically reduce the number of leg injuries.

Dr. Dahlager Can Help Clients Find Comfort From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Faster

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to make sure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Noblesville office at (317) 214-7218 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.