Research Shows Chiropractic Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a large number of sports injuries in our Napa, CA office, and Dr. Roxann Bettencourt, DC is usually able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults injured each year while taking part in sports-related activities, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the importance of preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One way to possible realize that goal, as stated in a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic care.

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

For this study particularly, all of the participants received medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also engaged in chiropractic treatments at the rate of one treatment per week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one session per month for the final 3 months of the study. The remaining half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic.

After 24 matches, researchers 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 correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to dramatically lessen the number of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to ensure greater time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our Napa, CA office at (707) 257-3600 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.