We see a large number of sports injuries in our Buffalo clinic, and Dr. John Nowak is generally able to help these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and below are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults hurt each year 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 necessity of minimizing these types of widespread injuries. One way 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, frequently 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 whether chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them playing.
For this study specifically, all of the players received medical treatment. In addition, half of them also engaged in chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first 6 weeks, biweekly sessions for the following three months, and one treatment a month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The other half were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.
After 24 matches, researchers noticed a diminished number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that very group also missed fewer matches related to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to effectively reduce the quantity of leg injuries.
If you or your child are active in sports and you want to make sure more time is spent on the field as opposed to on the sidelines, call our Buffalo office at (716) 825-4121 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.
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