We come across a large number of sports injuries in our New York clinic, and Dr. Phelts is usually 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 close to 2 million adults injured annually 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 importance of minimizing these sorts of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, as reported by a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, often sidelining the players and affecting their team's odds of winning. One specific study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see whether chiropractic could diminish these injuries and help keep them in the game.

For this study specifically, every one of the players received medical treatment. Additionally, half of them also engaged in chiropractic treatments at the rate of one treatment each week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments 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 at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic adjustments.

Following 24 matches, specialists reported 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 ought to be made an addition to sports training programs to dramatically decrease the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child are active in sports and you would like to ensure greater time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our New York office at (212) 286-2012 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.