Studies Show Chiropractic Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a good deal of sports injuries in our Waldorf, MD office, and Dr. Lipsitz is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults injured annually while taking part in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the necessity of preventing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, frequently sidelining the players and affecting their team's likelihood of securing a win. One specific study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study in particular, all of the players received medical treatment. In addition, half of them also were given chiropractic treatments at the rate of one session each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one session per month for the remaining three months of the study. The remaining half were given no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic.

Following twenty-four matches, scientists reported a lessened amount 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 added to sports training programs to effectively lessen the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to ensure greater time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our Waldorf, MD office at (301) 645-8898 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.