By Dr. Derek Pelofsky
Its September and that means only one thing. Football is in full swing. I don’t know about you but I count the days from early January, which is when the college Bowl Championship games are played till the beginning August, the start of Two-a-day practices for teams. I grew up in Oklahoma, and in Oklahoma football is not just a sport it a pretty much a religion. I can remember going to my first University of Oklahoma football game at 5yrs old. Sure enough every Saturday that OU was in Norman for a home game, my dad and I were there thru my college days. Since I’ve lived in Southern California for the past 7 years, my passion for OU and football in general has become even stronger. So my passion for the sport, and having the privilege and ability to play in high school, combined with my passion for sports medicine really fuels what I do for a living.
A subject that I wanted to touch up on is why use chiropractic if not in pain and how it relates to football and sports in general. One of the most common responses I get from patients when asking them how are you doing today is; “well I guess not to good if I’m here. I want to be very clear on this point. Chiropractic and all the different treatments we perform are great to help heal people, and being involved with sports, injuries are going to happen, but the ultimate healthcare minded person is one who looks for preventive medicine. Many people don’t realize that there are many professional athletes around the world that utilize chiropractic as a means to prevent their body from breaking down and keep it running at its highest capacity. A great way to compare this is do you wait for your car to breakdown once the infamous check engine light comes on? No of course not, you do laitance, with regular tune ups and checkups at least every 3,000 miles. Why would you treat your body differently from your car? After all once your body breaks down, that means pain and discomfort which may cause you to lose time at work or just preventing you from the daily things you enjoy doing.
Many of you have a youngster in little league football or even somewhere up in the high school or college level. Now is the time to get these athletes checked out and treated. The most common injuries we see in football are of course knee injures due to all the lateral movement performed. Neck injuries to the nerves that exit the upper neck region and go into the arm, which is known as a “stinger”. Last but not least we see a lot of concussion type injuries due to the all the contact that occurs. As a football player , and as a parent of a football player, I would want to make sure my spine, muscles, and the extremity joints were all working at its highest level to help prevent any of the injuries and allow for a healthy and fun season. Of course this goes for all athletes in all sports, don’t wait for the check engine light to come on before you breakdown! Take care of your body and use the doctors of CSI as the tune-up specialist for your body. BOOMER SOONER!
Dr. Derek Pelofsky is a Doctor of Chiropractic at Chiropractic Sports Institute where he has his private practice caring for both Amateur and Professional athletes. He has completed extensive post-graduate training in the field of Sports Chiropractic and Nutrition. Along with an lustrious career as a College Baseball player, Dr. Derek lives and breaths athletics.
