Studies Show Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a good deal of sports injuries in our Parkland clinic, and Dr. Scharf is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and below are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults injured annually while participating 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 importance of minimizing these sorts of widespread injuries. One way to possible achieve that goal, as stated in a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, frequently sidelining the players and affecting their team's odds of securing a win. One particular 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.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study specifically, every one of the players got medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also were given chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 session per week for the first six weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one treatment a month for the last 3 months of the study. The other half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

Following twenty-four matches, specialists noted a lessened number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, that very group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to dramatically lessen the amount of leg injuries.

Dr. Scharf Can Help Patients Find Comfort From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Quicker

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to make sure greater time is dedicated on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Parkland office at (954) 227-0088 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.