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The Dream Team: Chiropractic sports medicine designed to treat athletes

While professional athletic teams have a long history of enlisting a variant medical staff, having a team chiropractor has also become the standard.

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Latisha Catchatoorian
, WRAL Digital Solutions
This article was written for our sponsor, the North Carolina Chiropractic Association.
Every NBA franchise team and all 32 NFL teams have team chiropractors. While professional athletic teams have a long history of enlisting a variant medical staff, having a team chiropractor has also become the standard.

Chiropractors can do a lot to help both professional and high school amateur athletes alike. Chiropractic sports medicine is specifically designed to treat athletes with musculoskeletal manipulations that can provide pain relief, realign the body, help prevent injuries and even improve performance.

Tiger Woods said seeing a chiropractor on a regular basis made him a better golfer, and NBA legend Michael Jordan said chiropractic helped him "improve by leaps and bounds, both mentally and physically."

Dr. Todd Staker of Staker Chiropractic Center in Cary runs a family chiropractic practice that treats athletic patients from pee-wee league players to collegiate and professional competitors. Staker is the provider of chiropractic services for the Carolina Hurricanes, North Carolina Central University and UNC Athletics.

He said whenever a tremendous amount of force is being exerted on the soft tissue, like in sports, there is a risk of a soft tissue injury.

"That could be a muscle pull, that could be a ligament injury. So what we find with a majority of our patients, and it's true of our sports-minded patients and our athletes, is that we want to make sure that, mechanically, things are moving correctly," he explained. "Our primary goal is to make sure that their spine is in proper alignment, which is of the utmost importance. With many of our athletes, this starts with the foundation of the spine which encompasses the hips and pelvis."

If a person's spine, pelvic bones and other musculoskeletal areas are misaligned, it puts a tremendous amount of strain on the muscles. Chiropractors are trained to stabilize the area as much as possible and take corrective measures to make sure the body is in proper alignment.

Staker further explained a stable alignment can provide a solid foundation for a person to move, twist, bend and do explosive maneuvers that athletes are required to perform.

Dr. Michael Krasnov, a chiropractor in Durham, emphasized that chiropractic benefits athletes through analysis and treatment to the structure of the body. Krasnov served as a team chiropractor for the 1996 U.S. Olympic Track and Field team, and for N.C. State University and Duke athletic teams.

"We help people move better, help their alignment, help activation of their muscles," Krasnov said. He noted that many chiropractors tend to take a holistic approach toward assessment and treatment, and said that chiropractic can assist patients to peak performance.

"Being as responsive as possible to whatever they tell their bodies to do is crucial," Krasnov said. "Being a little quicker to make the difference between grabbing a rebound or not, or winning your race or not. Being a little more balanced to determine landing properly in an event like figure skating or gymnastics or not landing properly."

Staker stressed chiropractors do not just treat "neck and back" issues in athletes, but also the hips, pelvis and more. He said he sees patients who struggle with things like plantar fasciitis (heel pain) and knee pain such as ITB syndrome or runner's knee.

"Many patients are surprised when they come in with knee pain and we start working on the hips and pelvis first. We also discuss exercises to stabilize the area of concern and we do soft tissue treatment called active release technique to remove muscle and tendon tightness and restriction," he said. "So seeing a chiropractor and talking to them about adjustments and soft tissue work may be advantageous and may help the general public who doesn't think that chiropractic can even help them."

Chiropractic doesn't necessarily treat pain directly, but the root cause of pain. Oftentimes the manifestation of pain and discomfort is coming from the musculoskeletal system, and chiropractors help "connect the dots" as Staker puts it.

Krasnov relayed a story about a Division I basketball player he worked with who had an ankle injury that just wouldn't heal. After doctors suggested surgery as a possible option, the head trainer for the team asked Krasnov to look at the player's ankle.

"What had happened was something had just slightly gotten malpositioned in her ankle," Krasnov recalled. "You have a little bone right in front of your ankle bone that kind of rotates or slides back and forth. It was stuck and I manipulated the ankle, and the athlete was able to actually play that night in the basketball game."

While results aren't always that dramatic, Krasnov said chiropractic can help people compete for gold or just play hoops in their driveway.

"Sometimes chiropractic can be the factor that helps them get back to doing what they love to do," he said.

This article was written for our sponsor, the North Carolina Chiropractic Association.

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