We encounter a good deal of sports injuries in our Noblesville clinic, and Dr. Dahlager is generally able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that more than 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are injured each year when playing sports. Add that to the almost 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 importance of preventing these sorts of common injuries. One way to potentially achieve that goal, as stated in a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive regular chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg injuries are common, often sidelining the players and impacting 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 playing.

For this study specifically, every one of the participants received medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also engaged in chiropractic sessions at the rate of 1 session per week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one session a month for the last 3 months of the study. The remaining participants were given no chiropractic intervention whatsoever and acted as the control group to determine the benefits of chiropractic care.

After 24 matches, scientists noticed a reduced amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Moreover, 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 reduce the amount of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you want to ensure greater time is dedicated on the field as opposed to on the bench, call our Noblesville office at (317) 214-7218 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.