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Studies Show Chiropractic Care Beneficial at Preventing Sports Injuries

We come across a good deal of sports injuries in our Redondo Beach office, and Dr. Vinick is often able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year while playing sports. Add that to the close to 2 million adults injured annually 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 potentially realize that goal, as reported by a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic care.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's chance at securing a win. One specific study was administered using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see how well chiropractic could reduce these injuries and help keep them in the game.

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

After twenty-four matches, scientists noted a reduced number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Additionally, that very group also missed fewer matches connected to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to effectively lessen the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you want to make sure greater time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our Redondo Beach office at (310) 375-4325 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.
February 20, 2017
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