We see a large number of sports injuries in our Highland Park, Saint Paul, Minnesota office, and Robert C Slater, DC is usually able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports 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 injured every year while engaged 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 necessity of minimizing these sorts of common injuries. One way to possible realize that goal, as stated in a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to engage in routine chiropractic treatments.
In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are commonplace, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's chance at winning. One specific study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could reduce these injuries and help keep them playing.
For this study in particular, all of the players got medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 session each week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one treatment a month for the last 3 months of the study. The remaining half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.
Following twenty-four matches, scientists noticed a reduced number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Additionally, that same 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 dramatically reduce the number of leg injuries.
If you or your child plays sports and you would like to ensure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Highland Park, Saint Paul, Minnesota office at (651) 699-3366 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.
