Fill the void! Weekend warriors need sports chiropractors

There is something unique about athletes, whether they are weekend warriors or professional players.

What sets them apart from other patients is their drive to heal their injuries promptly and thoroughly — and to improve their performance.

Athletes are fit, compliant, and motivated patients who often develop a long-term relationship with their sports chiropractor. They realize that their sports chiropractor relieves their pain, accelerates their healing, and enhances their performance.

Sports chiropractic is recognized for its effective and comprehensive care. With its complementary approach to sports medicine, it embraces such concepts as exercise physiology, sports biomechanics, sports psychology, exercise biochemistry, and motor learning skills.

It is a logical specialty for chiropractors to develop, and it rewards them financially as well as in terms of the satisfaction from enhancing lives.

Take one segment of the population — the 78 million baby boomers in this country who were born between 1946 and 1964. As a group, they’re extremely focused on health and fitness, sparking a 15 percent increase in nutritional supplements ($1.54 billion for antioxidants alone) and a five-fold increase in health-spa revenues, for example.

As a rule, boomers spend money more freely than other generations, and for them, it’s important to invest in products and services that will enhance their health, fitness, and longevity. They are active, and they push their children into organized sports in record numbers.

For baby boomers and the rest of the U.S. population are living in a sports-crazed society. People pour millions of dollars into sports equipment, apparel, training, food, nutritional, and healthcare products. Television commercials tout the advantages of exercise equipment, nutritional supplements, and weight loss programs.

Consumers are flooded with information, but don’t know what to believe. They need someone to turn to.

Sports chiropractors are in a unique position to help people understand the essential components of wellness and fitness without offering solutions that have potentially risky side effects. We are the professionals who can help heal and prevent injuries — and maximize performance.

It’s ironic that the United States spends more of its gross domestic product on healthcare and more per capita on this category than any other nation in the world, yet we are ranked 39th in general health — and we are the fattest nation on the globe. In fact, our children are getting fatter at a faster rate than in any other country on the planet.

It is estimated that there are 45 million participants in organized sports and more than 25 million golfers, for example. People spend more than $770 million a year on tennis and $900 million on bicycles.

Somehow, gaps exist between sports and education, fitness and nutrition, and physical activity and injury prevention. The United States needs sports chiropractors to help bridge these gaps.

But it takes a special set of skills and a commitment to excellence and integrity to qualify you as the best sports DC in your community. Fine-tune your knowledge of sports and sports injuries. Become expert in all its many facets. Project yourself as the professional, caring sports practitioner/educator/advisor you are trained to be. Then show your community who you are.

Sports chiropractors are an integral part of the Olympics and on virtually every professional sports team. Their value in local communities is just as important. Every practice has its share of athletes hobbling in due to an injury. But it’s the sports specialist who can provide the most skilled care. There’s an important need for sports DCs today.

Philip T. Santiago, DC, is director of sports chiropractic for the New York Chiropractic College. An active member of the American Chiropractic Association’s Sports Council, in 1992 Santiago was the only chiropractor on the United States Olympic Sports Medicine Team at the Barcelona Olympics. Presently, he serves on the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Advisory Committee as well as the Chiropractic Selection Committee. He can be contacted at Drsantiago@aol.com.