386- The Current State of Sports Chiropractic

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

How do you hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langme. This week we are back with more research and this one's all around sports care. Lot of great take home messages, really cool article and it really highlights what's going on with chiropractic and sports care as we know it today and additionally where it may go in the future. So great article you're gonna wanna stick and stay tuned for before we get started, I wanna say a few words about Patient Pilot by the smart chiropractor. As we like to say by buyers are buyers. People who have already said yes to care once are the most likely to say yes again if you stay top of mind. How are you staying top of mind? The best way to do that is through automated email campaigns that drive weekly reactivations back onto your schedule. Because we know if your reactivations are more than your inactivations each and every month, you have an infinitely sustainable practice. That's what we do with a 3x ROI guarantee. If you'd love to learn more about that, head over to thesmartchiropractor.com, hop on a demo, we'll ask you a bunch of questions. You can ask us as many questions as you'd like and let's see if it's a great fit. 3x ROI guarantee thesmartchiropractor.com, i'll drop that link down below thesmartchiropractor.com but as I said at the top on today's episode, we're diving into Sportscare. This was a article that just recently came out like brand brand new this month in Curious. It's an open access review article and it is titled Unlocking Athletic Potential. The integration of Chiropractic care into into the Sports industry and its impact on performance and health of athletes and economic growth in China and Hong Kong. Wow, that is quite a title. About a million words there. So I'm going to drop that down in the show notes. If you want to go check it out yourself, you're more than welcome to do so. But it has a lot of really interesting information, interesting citations to other studies and highlights a lot of what we know in terms of sports care today. Now if you have been following along with interviews by The Smart Chiropractor, my interview based podcast that I do with my partner Jason. We've interviewed a ton of sports chiropractors on that podcast. Again, interviews by the smart chiropractor. And it's been super fascinating to see in most professional settings. There's probably some exceptions, of course, but in most professional settings, chiropractors are used everywhere in professional sports, pretty much on every team from all major sports. And the weird part about it, or the funny thing would be if you ask somebody off the street, well, what's a chiropractor doing? They'd probably be part of the medical team to help the athletes, you know, stay healthy to recover. Right. And while that's part of it, pain relief is a very fractional percentage we've discovered of what most of these docs are doing at the highest level because the medical team, the physical therapy, the physical therapist, the orthopedist, they're taking care of a lot of the pain based issues. And the chiropractor is there really for biomechanics, functional improvement and the potential for athletic performance improvement because they're optimized. So chiropractic at the highest level, which is the irony, right? You know, many people are still unsure if they should see a chiropractor for low back pain, which is like the lowest level, easiest thing that we can take care of. Yet the people that have the most to gain and the most to lose are regularly using chiropractic services for functional performance benefits. That includes of course, staying out of pain. But it's not for exclusive, it's not exclusively for getting out of pain. And I think that's just an interesting thing. As I've gone out there and talked with more and more of the highest level sports chiros and that's encouraging to me because it showcases the diversity, the scope and the thought, thought of how we are perceived at the highest level. And that's cool because that eventually trickles down and that'll tie into some of what this study highlights as well. So why chiropractic? Let's just start with some background and intro as they highlight in the study, you know, our focus on the neuromusculoskeletal system is critical and it's, there's a, there's a link there to optimizing athletic performance and sports chiropractic care over the last couple decades has emerged as a critical piece of, of the healthcare management of athletes. I could not agree more. We also see it at the collegiate level. We even see it at the high school level. So this is really something, I think, that's taken the chiropractic world by storm, so to speak, over the last decade or two. And many young chiropractors view themselves as sports chiropractors by definition, instead of viewing themselves as in the antiquated modes of what we used to perceive chiropractic as. Are you this or are you that? Most people would now say, I'm a sports chiropractor. I think that's pretty cool. So, so chiropractic is important because it can do a few different things. It can facilitate injury prevention, it can provide rehabilitation and overall performance enhancement. Now, as they define chiropractic care in this study, they included manual therapy, you know, spinal adjustments, manipulation, mobilization, soft tissue techniques, pretty much all of these manual opportunities to optimize function and relieve pain. And they highlight that there's been several studies in the past that found chiropractic to be effective in treating common conditions seen in athletes, things like lower back pain, muscle strains and joint dysfunction. Additionally, adding chiropractic into a athletic regimen can enhance biomechanics. It can potentially decrease injury rates and accelerate recovery, which that is all, of course, really, really good news for the high level athletes. And quite frankly, even if you're not a high level athlete, why wouldn't you want to have performance improvement in your activities of daily living? Right. You know, age and gravity are undefeated. So anything that anybody can do positively with low risk, with high reward is a really good idea when you can combat that age and gravity over time. So the role of chiropractic care in athletic performance, it comes from a couple fundamental principles and techniques which really focus on the core of who we are and what we do. Assess, diagnose and treat neuromusculoskeletal disorders. That's what we do, right? So that is completely in line with somebody, of course, as an athlete that's using their body for a functional benefit, so to speak, to win a sport, to accomplish a task, et cetera. So being able to tie in neuromusculoskeletal system, of course, critically, critically important. The also interesting thing they highlight in this study, and I think it's a growing aspect in chiropractic. We just interviewed a doc on interviews by smart chiropractor, incidentally about this, and it's chiropractic and concussion, I don't know a lot about it, so I definitely cannot speak as an expert how chiropractors can address it. But I've seen more and more about this. It makes sense to me at a surface level. I'm not deep into the technique of that, but chiropractors can and have been shown to help people with concussion like symptoms that can include things like a concussion itself. It can include the associated neck discomfort, headache, dizziness, all of these things that happen in collision based sports. And we even see centers like they've built at Parker that really have specific equipment, protocols and approaches to helping people overcome the post traumatic symptoms associated with a concussion. Fascinating stuff. I think there's a lot that we're gonna learn there in the next five, 10, 15 years and that's all really, really exciting stuff. In addition to treating existing injuries, chiropractic can also play a really important role in injury prevention in optimizing biomechanics and movement assessments. Of course that's a tenet of many sports chiropractors and long term physical maintenance for athlet. I think about this like the bricks, right? If you don't have the great segmental motion, how can you have good regional motion? How can you have whole body motion that's optimal? So this really does play in and stack upon each other. It's been demonstrated that chiropractic techniques such as manipulation, soft tissue technique can be effective in the prevention and treatment of sports related injuries. Things like muscle strains, joint sprains, those items we take care of in and you know, within athletes outside of the athletic population, all day, every day. And by taking care of those we can expect better joint mobility, better muscle flexibility, better neuromuscular coordination. And ultimately these things combine to have the potential for improved athletic performance. We also look what's going on with like racket fit on base U TPI Greg Rose's behemoth that he has built in the sports and athletic world. This is just there is so much opportunity and we are at the bleeding edge of what is to come, which is, can be super, super exciting and is super, super exciting. So incorporating chiropractic care into an athlete's healthcare and training regimen is really important because of the nature of what we do. You know. So I'll take a step back and take kind of off my chiropractic hat because sometimes we become so blinded to like, yeah, of course that's what we do. Well, it's not what most other people do. You know, most other healthcare professionals, maybe they are looking towards a surgical intervention, they're looking towards an injection, they're looking towards a medication. Items that may not be addressing biomechanics have potential high harms and side effects don't actually correct the problem, but might gate the pain and have really limited, if any, in most of the cases, none of the opposite performance benefit out of it, you might get back to a level to function. As we've seen with, you know, Tommy John, surgery, et cetera, used to be a career ender. Now people can come back, but people clearly don't do that for performance benefit. You know, you do it because there's an injury and you hope to get back to the state that you were. That's a totally different paradigm than how athletic performance is approached from a chiropractic perspective, where our expectation is practically improved performance because people will be feeling better, functioning better, moving better, all super, super critical stuff that we almost take for granted because we see it, it's what we do. But for most people, most of the time, that's not the case. So being able to highlight that through the communications you have, this is what we do with smart chiropractor and patient pilot. As we highlighted at the beginning, we have sports care months and they dive deep into these topics because whether you're a weekend warrior, whether you're just getting through the game of life, so to speak, a little corny there, or whether you are a professional athlete, being able to move, function and feel better is critically important, as we all know. So there's been a ton of studies out there that have showcased. A lot of them are highlighted in the citations of this paper that showcase positive outcomes for chiropractic treated athletes, including things like improved musculoskeletal function, reduced pain and enhanced recovery. Now, there are still gaps in the research. This is a growing body of research, but this is so dynamic and so multi. How would you say? Multi platform. There's so many inputs and outputs that makes it challenging from a research perspective. Research is, I'm going to say, more exquisite when it is a single input and a single output. We are trying to do this with as little to no variables as possible, and we are trying to see what happens on the back end with little to no variables. Now, by the definition of who we are as human beings, that's it becomes a very difficult proposition. When you add in athletic performance to it and training regimens, that becomes even more challenging. But it is, as we've highlighted throughout this podcast, it's a growing field which is really, really interesting. Now, sports in China and Hong Kong have also had explosive growth and chiropractic has gone along with it. This has been driven by government investment, a growing middle class And a greater focus on health and wellness. You know, incidentally, it sounds like here in the States we are the opposite of that. There's a shrinking middle class and there is a less of a focus on health and wellness if I looked at things over the last few years. But that's a story for a different. This was just highlighting what's going on in China and Hong Kong. So integrating chiropractic care into the sports injury does require, excuse me, into the sports industry does require a multi pronged approach. And there's a couple different things that have to happen, right. One is the development of infrastructure. Super important and often overlooked. Public awareness, critical educational campaigns and supportive policies all are critically important when trying to build and grow this. And there's some great organizations. We highlighted some of them earlier. TPI, OnBaseU, Racketfit. We see organizations getting out there, but man the boots on the ground of what we can do as providers. That's why I'm so passionate about getting the message out there via email, via social, specifically the tools that we build because that helps expedite that knowledge gap between what the public perception is and what we know to be the truth. And that is really, really important. Now here in the United States, infrastructure tends not to. This is a good thing, tends not to be as big of an issue. But clearly when we get outside of the States, there can be really, really big infrastructure issues. So developing the infrastructure support chiropractic is critical. And that includes just like even down to basic stuff like diagnostic equipment, tables, you know, not only is it the building and the physical space, but it's the tools. And in many practices that add in chiropractic they didn't, they didn't have all of that ready. Right. If you think about a medical practice, they open up a medical practice, all the medical gear is there. But adding chiropractic in, usually that's what it is, an add in. Right. So building the infrastructure so that chiropractic is thought of at the time of inception of the medical program in the athletic field, so to speak, really, really important because that ensures that the tools, the infrastructure, the communication is there from the get go as opposed to being added on later on. I think everybody has been through and participated in sports has experienced that kind of thing. Well, why don't you throw your table in that closet, which is not a bad thing to get started. But that's an add on as opposed to. We have a wonderful training facility with a room dedicated to chiropractic. That is infrastructure. We're getting there, but there's still a long way to go. Additionally, chiropractic education and training programs, we highlighted some great ones earlier and a couple times throughout this podcast. But being able to get that specialized training, really, really important collaboration and networking tenet of what we do at the evidence based chiropractor from a product service perspective, important here as well in the athletic populations, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between chiropractors, healthcare professionals. Absolutely critical. Absolutely critical. You cannot be a lone wolf, you cannot be defensive if you're trying to work in a team environment. Which is ironic because it's like if you're going to be working for a team, everybody on that team needs to be a team player. So do you. Being part of the medical team and the medical staff, healthcare staff, in that case, public awareness. We touched on this just a moment ago as a key aspect of getting this out there farther educational campaigns, et cetera, really highlighting to the audiences to athletes, coaches, sports organizations that chiropractic can do X, Y and Z, that it can improve function, that it can reduce pain, that it has the potential for optimizing for performance. One great way to do that is collaboration. This is a tip for you to take home and utilize, you know, collaborate with local sports celebrities and influencers. Get out there Social proof works. Testimonials work. I'm a big fan and I always say it. In our businesses you can never have enough testimonials and I would say the same for you. You can never have enough testimonials. So get out there with influencers and support celebrities. Share that knowledge that helps stimulate action from other people. No question about it. And additionally, educational campaigns that emphasize the benefits of care that's supported by evidence such as enhanced performance, injury prevention and rehab support. Additionally, there's great organizations at a high level from a, I'm gonna say more of a political, so to speak, perspective World Federation of Chiropractic f great organizations that are out there ensuring that chiropractors have the ability to be present, then it's a matter of us individually showing up and moving the needle. So bottom line is chiropractic care has a potential to significantly improve performance, health and well being of athletes. As we all know, we are on that road. There have been massive changes in the last few years, but there is still a long way to go. So if you are an aspiring sports chiropractor, I think you got a long way, fantastic road ahead of you. If you are a current sports chiropractor, keep getting the word out ensure people know. Make sure you're collaborating with other local athletes and make sure that people are aware that what we do is beyond just pain relief. While important, it also is about human performance and that is why you can look towards these highest level athletes that utilize who we are and what we do. Now, before we wrap up, I want to say a few words about Kairo Spring. If you are ready to see why Kyro Spring is voted the best solution for chiropractors by chiropractors in the EHR world, head over and schedule a demo Chirospring.com offer they'll hook you up with a $50Amazon gift card. Why wouldn't you do that? Now is the time to do it. Head over to Chirospring.com offer they will hook you up with a $50Amazon gift card for scheduling a demo. So if you have any frustration with your current ehr, hop on a demo over there. They support this podcast. You should support them and that drives right into as well. Power Step Power Step Orthotics are awesome. They support this podcast. I'm gonna ask you to support them and they're also gonna do you a super solid by leading a listener to this podcast for totally free. They're gonna hook you up with a free sample pair. Pro.powerstep.com sample I'll drop the links to these down below. Pro.powerstep.com Sample Use the code EBC and they will hook you up with a free sample pair of orthotics. They're what I use and what my father uses. They were developed by a podiatrist over 30 years ago and they are awesome. And they might be able to be a great revenue source in your practice as well beyond your personal use. So head on over. Support those organizations. Thank you so much for being a chiropractor. Thank you so much for listening. If you have not left us a rating or review yet, I'd love to see it. So scroll on down. Tap how many stars, leave a line or two of text. That would be awesome. Thank you so much. Have a great week and I will talk to you soon.

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