We encounter a large number of sports injuries in our Olympia office, and TJ Delorie is often able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults injured every year while engaged in sports-related activities, according to statistics collected by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can begin to see the necessity of preventing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, according to a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in regular chiropractic treatments.
In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are commonplace, often sidelining the players and impacting their team's odds of winning. One specific 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.
For this study specifically, all of the volunteers got medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of one treatment per week for the first six weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one treatment each month for the remaining three months of the study. The remaining half were given no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic.
After twenty-four matches, scientists noted a diminished amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Additionally, that very group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic ought to be added to sports training programs to effectively decrease the quantity of leg injuries.
If you or your child plays sports and you want to ensure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Olympia office at 724-123-1234 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.