Sports and Chiropractic Care

The Chiropractor plays a very important role in the sports world. From professional to amateur and even the weekend player, all are benefiting from chiropractic care.

The Chiropractor’s role is not only to treat injuries, but they can also help to enhance performance, prevent and manage injuries. They can be effective in the nutritional aspects of athletic performance as well as helping in competition preparation and endurance, and all aspects of injury prevention and treatment.

More and more athletes, professional and amateur, are choosing chiropractic care; this is evident by the increased treatments in the collegiate, Olympic, and professional levels. The list of advocates is long, and includes boxing champion Evander Holyfield along with professional football players Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Rodger Craig. Other advocates are Chichi Rodriguez in golf; world champion kick-boxer Dennis Alexio; as well as champions in virtually every major sport are becoming regular chiropractic patients. Many athletes insist on being adjusted by their chiropractors just prior to competition. They feel they are not able to perform at their optimum ability without the reassurance that they have full range of motion and decreased restriction in their joints.

The athlete is always looking to enhance performance, speed, injury rehabilitation, and increase endurance. In their search they are being drawn to the benefits of nutrition. Chiropractors qualified in the field of nutrition are able to give pertinent advice on vitamin supplementation, dietary intakes, environmental toxicities, homeostasis, and biomechanical reactions of bodily systems.

Looking to reduce injuries, entire teams as well as individual athletes are following a chiropractic designed conditioning program. Chiropractors are trained professionals in the area of biomechanical function of the neuromusculoskeletal system are capable of preparing a better, more complete conditioning and injury prevention program.

The trend towards chiropractic in sports care has been shown to be valid. It is hoped that more definitive studies in the area of nutrition, biomechanics and injury rehabilitation will be done to heighten chiropractic in the sports care arena. Because of the increasing worldwide interest in sports and fitness, no matter what your age or level of athletic achievement, the opportunity to finally see the role of chiropractic in sports cares is at hand.

Chiropractic Research Shows Positive Benefits!

Numerous studies have shown that chiropractic treatment is both safe and effective. The following are excerpts from a few of the more recent studies. By examining the research supporting chiropractic care, you will find that chiropractic offers tremendous potential in meeting today’s health care challenges.

For Acute and Chronic Pain

Patients with chronic low-back pain treated by chiropractors showed greater improvement and satisfaction at one month than patients treated by family physicians. Satisfaction scores were higher for chiropractic patients. A higher proportion of chiropractic patients (56% vs. 13%) reported that their low-back pain was better or much better, whereas nearly one third of medical patients reported their low-back pain was worse or much worse.

(2000) Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics-

In a randomized controlled trial, 183 patients with neck pain were randomly allocated to manual therapy (spinal mobilization), physiotherapy (mainly exercise) or general practitioner care (counseling, education and drugs) in a 52- week study. The clinical outcomes measures showed that manual therapy resulted in faster recovery than physiotherapy and general practitioner care. Moreover, total costs of the manual therapy-treated patients were about one-third of the costs of physiotherapy or general practitioner care.

(2003) British Medical Journal-

In comparison to other treatment alternatives, acute and chronic chiropractic patients experienced better outcomes in pain, functional disability, and patient satisfaction; clinically important differences in pain and disability improvement were found for chronic patients.

(2005) Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics-

In our randomized, controlled trial we compared the effectiveness of manual therapy, physical therapy, and continued care by a general practitioner in patents with nonspecific neck pain. The success rate at seven weeks was twice as high for the manual group (68.3%) as for the continued care group (general practitioner). Manual therapy scored better than physical therapy on all outcome measures. Patients receiving manual therapy had fewer absences from work than patients receiving physical therapy or continued care. Manual therapy and physical therapy each resulted in statistically significant less analgesic use than continued care.