Studies Show Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Rutland office, and Dr. Cyr is generally able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt every year while engaged in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the importance of minimizing these types of common injuries. One approach to potentially achieve that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are commonplace, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's odds of winning. One specific study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study in particular, every one of the participants got medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of one session each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one treatment per month for the last three months of the study. The remaining participants had no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

After 24 matches, scientists reported a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that same group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to dramatically lessen the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you want to ensure more time is spent on the field versus on the sidelines, call our Rutland office at (802) 775-6961 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.