Chiropractic Treatment Helps Prevent Lower Limb Injuries for Athletes

When playing sports that require a lot of lower body motion, like football, soccer, and basketball, it's not at all uncommon to sustain some type of injury to your lower extremities. Between pulled hamstrings, sprained ankles, knee injuries, and more, many people have found themselves out of commission. Dr. Bettencourt has seen all of these issues in our Napa patients. Thankfully, chiropractic care can help prevent some of these injuries from happening and research proves it.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps With Sports Injuries & Recovery

Dr. Bettencourt keeps current with all of the recent scientific research, and in a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, researchers from Macquarie University in Australia studied 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers. Roughly half were placed in a control group and the other half were put in a treatment group that received sports chiropractic care at regular intervals. During the first six weeks, this meant getting care once per week. The following three months consisted of an adjustment every two weeks before decreasing those to one visit monthly for the final three months of the study.

Researchers noted that there was a "significant" decrease in the number of lower limb strains the players received in the treatment group when compared to the control. In addition, they observed that the subjects who received chiropractic care also had less weeks of missed practice and games as a result of non-contact knee injuries. This led them to determine that sports chiropractic intervention should be added to "the current best practice management."

Every major sports team in the US and the US Olympic Team has chiropractors on staff for their players, because they know that chiropractic adjustments really works. If you live near our office in Napa and would like to see if Dr. Bettencourt can help you boost your performance or reduce sports injuries, give our office a call today at (707) 257-3600 for an appointment.

Dr. Bettencourt Can Help People Find Comfort From Sports Injuries and Recover Quicker

If you're troubled with severe problems, Dr. Bettencourt and our staff are here to help you recover. Give our Napa office a call today at (707) 257-3600 for an appointment.

Study Information

Hoskins W, Pollard H. The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back problems, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian rules footballers: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2010;11(64).