When playing sports that require a lot of lower body movement, like football, soccer, and basketball, it's not at all uncommon to suffer some type of injury to your lower extremities. Between pulled hamstrings, sprained ankles, knee injuries, and more, many people have found themselves sidelined. Dr. David J. Mulholland has seen all of these problems in our Anchorage patients. Fortunately, chiropractic can help prevent some of these injuries from developing and research proves it.
Dr. David J. Mulholland keeps up-to-date with all of the latest 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 others were put in a treatment group that received sports chiropractic care at regular intervals. During the first six weeks, this meant getting care once every 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. Furthermore, they observed that the subjects who engaged in chiropractic also had fewer 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 United States and the US Olympic Team has chiropractors on staff for their players, because they know that chiropractic really works. If you live near our practice in Anchorage and would like to see if Dr. David J. Mulholland can help you boost your performance or reduce sports injuries, give our office a call today at (907) 770-5700 for an appointment.
Study Information
Hoskins W, Pollard H. 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 2010;11(64).