Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a good deal of sports injuries in our Massillon, OH office, and Drs. Ken Haycock & Tim Vierheller is generally able to assist 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 almost 2 million adults hurt each year while engaged in sports-related activities, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of minimizing these sorts of widespread injuries. One way to potentially realize that goal, as reported by a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are commonplace, 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 if chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study specifically, every one of the participants was given medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of 1 session each week for the first six weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one treatment each month for the final 3 months of the study. The other half were given no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

After twenty-four matches, specialists reported a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Additionally, that same group also missed fewer matches connected to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you want to make sure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Massillon, OH office at (330) 833-2085 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.