How Might Sports Medicine Benefit You?

What are the Benefits of Sports Medicine?

There are many different aspects to keeping your body healthy. While eating nutritious foods and exercising regularly are both extremely important aspects of a healthy lifestyle, they aren’t the only ways to care for your body. Sports medicine is an alternative form of healing that can help to mend hurt muscles and prevent healthy ones from succumbing to injury. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or a light exerciser, there are many aspects of sports medicine that can prove beneficial for you.

Using physiotherapy skills, physical therapists use specific techniques to treat sports-related injuries and to prevent future injuries. Because sports medicine techniques can be used for both treatment and preventative care, they can be beneficial for anyone who exercises regularly or plays sports. For those who have suffered a specific injury, sports medicine can help promote healing through holistic methods that focus on strengthening the body.

Choosing to treat your injuries through holistic practices like sports medicine can be simpler, quicker, and more effective than more invasive techniques. Painkillers can become addictive and only offer temporary relief, but sports medicine helps to treat the source of pain and discomfort, rather than masking the symptoms. Physical therapy can help increase the strength and flexibility of muscle tissue, and may also promote more ease of movement in the joints. Additionally, physical therapy may improve balance, posture, coordination, and positional awareness.

Common conditions physical therapy can help with include:

• Recovery from bone breaks and fractures
• Sprains
• Tendonitis
• Sciatica
• Muscle or tendon injuries
• Back pain
• Joint pain
• Arthritis
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
• Hip, knee, or leg pain

A sports therapist can also test the functionality of specific joints or muscle groups that are more prone to injury depending on the sport or exercise the patient participates in. By doing this, the therapist can identify any weak or troublesome areas before they give way to injury.

Sports medicine techniques often vary, but treatments typically include:

• Massage treatments
• Deep muscle stimulators
• Specialized stretches
• Core strengthening exercises
• Flexion distraction
• Chiropractic care

Our chiropractors and physical therapists understand the importance of using a variety of healing techniques to treat each injury through a specialized plan. Using chiropractic care and physical therapy in conjunction can help alleviate pain and restore movement and function. Chiropractic care works by fixing skeletal and muscular misalignments while physical therapy corrects imbalances, addresses trigger points, and helps build strength.

Regardless of your age, sports physical therapy practices can prove beneficial. Young patients, adults, and the elderly alike can receive specialized treatment according to their injuries and needs.

If you are interested in sports medicine, contact the Unruh Spine Center to schedule your appointment!