Chiropractic Care and Sports Injuries

We encounter a good deal of sports injuries in our Henderson, NV clinic, and Dr. Russell is generally able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults hurt each year while taking part in sports-related activities, according to statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One way to potentially achieve that goal, according to a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, frequently sidelining the players and impacting their team's chance at winning. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see how well chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study in particular, all of the volunteers received medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also were given chiropractic sessions at the rate of 1 treatment per week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the following three months, and one treatment each month for the last three months of the study. The other participants had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following twenty-four matches, specialists noticed a diminished amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Furthermore, that very 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 effectively decrease the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to make sure more time is spent on the field versus on the bench, call our Henderson, NV office at (702) 990-2225 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.