Shin Splints 101: Causes, Symptoms, and Chiropractic Solutions

Shin splints — pain that shoots down the shin bone in the lower leg — can quickly develop and derail your life, but you don’t have to live with it. 

Here at Synergy Release Sports, we’re widely known as the best chiropractor in Alpharetta and Atlanta, Georgia. One of the main reasons for our outstanding reputation is that we take the time to educate our patients and treat them like partners in their own treatment plans. 

Because we treat many athletes with shin splints — weekend runners to competitive triathletes — we wanted to address this painful condition in our first blog of the year. Here’s everything you need to know about the condition and how chiropractic care can help. 

Shin splint causes

Shin splints happen because of repetitive stress on the lower legs, so they’re common among athletes who participate in high-impact activities or ones with frequent stops and starts, such as running, jumping, basketball, football, and soccer.

A few of the factors that can increase your risk of shin splints include:

• Sudden increase in training
• Flat feet 
• High arches
• Improper footwear that doesn’t support your feet well
• Lack of conditioning 

Shin splints can develop in anyone without those risk factors, so it’s important to recognize the symptoms and get help. 

Shin splint symptoms 

Shin splints feature pain, soreness, or aching that runs along the inner part of your shin bone in your lower leg. Many people experience relief when they get off the court or field. 

But, if you don’t treat shin splints, they can worsen, and the pain could become a continuous problem even when you’re not exercising.

Chiropractic solutions for shin splints 

Chiropractic care and shin splints pair very well because chiropractic focuses on correcting underlying problems and improving whole-person wellness. 

At Synergy Release Sports, we tackle the problem of shin splints from all angles, including reducing stress on your shin bones, reducing inflammation, improving blood flow to the lower legs, decreasing scar tissue build-up, and balancing your whole-body alignment.  

Optimal full-body alignment is particularly crucial for pain relief and shin splint prevention. Our chiropractors use gentle, noninvasive techniques, called manual (hands-on) adjustments, to align both your spine and joints. 

Adjustments can help reduce the impact that running and kicking have on your shins, which, in turn, eases pain and helps prevent future shin splints.   

Many other techniques can work in tandem with manual chiropractic adjustments to help you recover faster, such as: 

• Prescription rehabilitative exercises (stretching and strengthening)
• Instrument-assisted adjustments, like the Graston Technique, to break up scar tissue
• Massage therapy, such as neuromuscular massage
• Active release technique 
• Kinesiology taping 
• Custom orthotics
• Frequency-specific microcurrent treatment

Many athletes come to us for help with shin splints, and we provide both preventive and relief care so you can get back to doing what you love as quickly as possible. 

If you’re struggling with shin splints, you can trust the best chiropractor in Atlanta and Alpharetta. We won’t rest until you get the very best results, so call our office, or reach out to us online today.