Research Shows Chiropractic Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We see a lot of sports injuries in our Naperville, IL office, and Frank Bendiks, DC, PC is generally able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are hurt each year when playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt annually while taking part 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 common injuries. One way to potentially realize that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive regular chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, frequently sidelining the players and impacting their team's likelihood of securing a win. One particular study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them playing.

Research Supports Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study specifically, every one of the volunteers got medical treatment. In addition, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one treatment per month for the final 3 months of the study. The other group were given no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

Following twenty-four matches, specialists noticed a lessened 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 conclude that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to dramatically decrease the amount of leg injuries.

Frank Bendiks, DC, PC Can Help Clients Find Relief From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Quicker

If you or your child are active in sports and you want to ensure greater time is spent on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Naperville, IL office at (630) 301-0054 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.