Research Shows Chiropractic Adjustments Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a large number of sports injuries in our Woburn & Chelmsford, MA office, and Dr. James Ellis & Dr. Lyndsay Martin is generally able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the nearly 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 preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to possible realize that goal, as stated in a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, often sidelining the players and impacting their team's odds of securing a win. One specific study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if chiropractic could reduce these injuries and help keep them playing.

Research Supports Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study particularly, all of the participants was given medical treatment. In addition, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of one treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly treatments for the following three months, and one session each month for the final three months of the study. The remaining half had no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.

Following twenty-four matches, specialists noted a lessened amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Moreover, that very group also missed fewer matches connected to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be made an addition to sports training programs to effectively reduce the number of leg injuries.

Dr. James Ellis & Dr. Lyndsay Martin 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 make sure greater time is dedicated on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Woburn & Chelmsford, MA office at (781) 460-0939 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.