Car accidents can cause a myriad of soft tissue injuries and subluxations. The result of such injuries can include vertigo, pain, decreased range of motion, and affects on your daily activities.
Often, the symptoms of whiplash take a few days to set in after the accident or the pain will “go away” for a period of time before returning more severely than initially. This presentation is especially common with whiplash and when left untreated, the pain can persist, cause a number of other compensatory injuries, and even become permanent.
Back and neck pain after a car accident are some of the most common signs of whiplash. According to the research, whiplash can happen in motor vehicle accidents as slow as 5 mph!
Whiplash symptoms can be delayed and remain hidden for weeks after an accident. Studies have shown that the sooner you start chiropractic care and physical therapy after a motor vehicle accident, the better you will feel in the short term, and the fewer long-term symptoms you will experience.
At Active Edge Chiropractic our goal is to return your musculature and joint alignment back to, if not better than your pre-injury status. We address all aspects of your injuries simultaneously to return your muscular balance, joint motion, strength, and overall function.
It only takes a 3-5mph collision to create a whiplash injury.
Whiplash injuries are generally not life threatening, but they are quality of life threatening.
After an accident, especially a severe one, an emergency room visit can help you rule out breaks, bleads, or other life threatening conditions. Emergency room doctors may also prescribe meds to reduce pain or other symptoms until you can get to your primary care physician or appropriate specialist.
Soft tissue injuries, including whiplash, are often undiagnosed in the ER because they are not of immediate concern and sometimes because the pain is still being masked by the adrenaline in your body that accompanies an accident. Soft tissue injuries can have a severe impact on quality of life, especially for smaller women and children who are more prone to whiplash injuries at low impact.
Untreated whiplash can result in neck pain, chronic lower back pain, disc degeneration, arthritic changes, general stiffness/tension, and even further reaching affects due to compensation patterns forming over time.
Because such a small impact can be whiplash inducing, we recommend that everyone receive a mobility evaluation within 1-2 weeks of an auto accident.
Your insurance company may offer you an early settlement after a car accident. Don’t take it.
Yes, this will put money in your pocket for immediate use, but it will not be enough to pay for your long-term medical bills once you begin noticing pain and discomfort. Even if you’re not feeling pain now , it’s important to get evaluated by a whiplash injury doctor who regularly deals with soft tissue injuries to fully assess the extent of damage to your range of motion, tissue quality, and your function.
Chiropractic care is a highly effective solution for whiplash, offering a range of benefits to promote healing and restore optimal function. Our chiropractors specialize in addressing whiplash-related issues, providing personalized treatments tailored to each patient’s needs.
We help alleviate neck, shoulder, back pain and more associated with whiplash through targeted adjustments or massage therapies (interlink) for soft tissue injuries. Sprained ligaments and strained muscles/tendons heal faster and more effectively when they are stimulated, regularly. With stimulation and motion comes blood flow, nutrients, and direction from your body for effective tissue organization as the affected tissues heal.
Chiropractic adjustments enhance flexibility and restore normal range of motion affected by realigning the spine and helping to remove any tension from whiplash injuries. When muscles/tendons/ligaments are shortened or imbalanced, joints become less mobile. When joints lack mobility, attached muscles/tendons/ligaments do not have the opportunity to move through their full range of motion, so they are more likely to stay shortened and become stiffer over time.
Accelerate the healing process by boosting healing from a physical, chemical, and emotional perspective simultaneously. As part of your care we’ll recommend nutrients to accelerate healing to damaged tissues, decrease pain, and encourage lymph movement and inflammation reduction as your body is ready for it. We’ll incorporate physiotherapies to boost cell function and thus accelerate healing from the inside out. You’ll receive muscle work, adjustments, retraining exercises to address the affected areas. We’ll work directly with the appropriate insurance company or attorneys so the process is as smooth as possible for you.
Proactive chiropractic care helps encourages the correct reorganization and healing of scar tissue after an injury. This prevents future development of chronic pain and complications often associated with untreated whiplash.
Experience relief and recovery with our specialized chiropractic treatments designed to address and resolve whiplash-related challenges.
As Doctors of Chiropractic, our education is based on the foundation that our bodies are intelligent and interconnected. Our curriculum includes some of the most in-depth training in spinal anatomy, musculoskeletal conditions and diagnosis, vertebral subluxations, kinesiology, and more. We’ve refined our knowledge over the years with continuous study about soft tissue injuries (traumatic or repetitive), joint function, rehabilitation, and the reaching affects it may have on your body as well as how other dysfunction can affect spine function, health, and neurological communication.
Our doctors are trained in a variety of techniques and utilize this diversified approach to make each patient’s experience as effective and comfortable as possible. Some of the techniques in our office include:
Applying these and other modalities in private practice since 2012, patients see positive improvements in pain reduction and range of motion.
Whiplash is a sudden strain on your neck and spine, often with your head or neck moving quickly forward or backwards due to impact. The impact can be expected or unexpected. The sudden impact causes muscles and ligaments of your neck, core, and back tighten to protect you. Their quick response can cause your head to snap back in the opposite direction. The severity of impact, size of person, and even gender can contribute to the severity of symptoms.
The breadth of symptoms can be influenced by your reaction at the time of impact. For example, you may also “tense up,” hold your breath, or “get the wind knocked out of you.” These accompanying responses make it common to feel soreness throughout the whole body as opposed to just in the neck where the injury occurred.
It only takes a 3-5 mile an hour collision to have a whiplash injury and the pain may not be evident immediately. Sometimes, just like a hard workout, the soreness and stiffness does not show up for a few hours to a couple days after the initial injury. Whiplash may present as or be accompanied by the following symptoms.
Concussion should also be considered when the following are present:
With low-grade injuries, you can expect to recover in a few days or weeks. For more severe whiplash injuries, they can last months, years, or you may have permanent injuries from damaging vertebrae in your neck, your spinal cord or nerve damage.
Even with mild whiplash injuries, it is wise to seek out a chiropractic evaluation. It only takes a 3-5 mph collision to sustain a whiplash injury and untreated whiplash is likely to result in chronic dysfunction later due to compensation that occurs shortly after injury.
Generally the sooner you seek care and the more comprehensive your care, the more likely you are to heal efficiently and with fewer lasting effects. Talk to your doctor and they will be able to give you an estimate based upon the severity of your injuries.
Due to the high incidence of chronic pain after untreated whiplash, it’s highly encouraged that you seek out chiropractic care that includes massage work and rehab exercises. If you can’t find them all in one place, then find we recommend finding a chiropractor, a massage therapist, and a physical therapist separately.
Tips to reduce pain and begin healing in the mean time include supplementation to reduce pain, control inflammation, and boost healing nutrients. Our favorites include soft tissue support packs from Orthomolecular (only available in office):
https://drhensel.metagenics.com/inflanvonoid-rapid
https://drhensel.nutridyn.com/prm-resolve
Alternating ice and heat on the affected areas will help drive out inflammation and toxins, then bring in fresh blood flow and nutrients, decreasing healing times and pain simultaneously. If you are doing ice/heat baths, we recommend alternating for one minute each and repeating 3 times. If you are using compresses, we recommend 20min of heat followed by 20min of ice.
Using a lacrosse ball, vibrating ball, hypervolt, massage gun, etc, and gentle movement (stretches and light exercise) through pain free or “therapeutic” ranges of motion will be helpful for moving blood, nutrients, inflammation, and restoring range of motion. To us, a therapeutic range of motion is pushing the edge of discomfort in that “hurt so good” sort of way. If the hurt is not so good, trust your instincts and back off.
Getting enough sleep is also key for repair and recovery
And most importantly, to speed up recovery and prevent chronic dysfunction that commonly results from untreated whiplash, find a professional or a team that will adjust the movement back into your affected joints, restore balance to the affected the muscles, and give you exercises to restore strength and movement efficiency.
Both whiplash and concussion are the result of your body’s response to a quick impact causing your head, neck, and potentially body to lurch forward or backwards and potentially snap back or be propelled back in the opposite direction if there is a 2nd impact, for example with an airbag or head rest. Whiplash is the diagnosis for the musculoskeletal/ligamentous injury that happens with a mechanism as described above. A concussion is the diagnosis for the brain injury that occurs when your brain is jarred by quick movement, causing it to hit the inside of your skull. Though one does not cause the other, they commonly occur in tandem with one another.
The short answer is yes, a whiplash injury can cause nerve damage. Most commonly nerve symptoms after a whiplash injury are due to nerve irritation where it exits an injured/inflamed level of the spine or as it passes through injured/tight musculature. This can generally be addressed efficiently with chiropractic adjustments, targeted muscle work through massage therapy, and movement retraining exercises.
True nerve damage can be caused by nerve compression or traction with an injury, but this is generally in more severe cases.
Nerve pain can present as sharp pain, burning, tingling or numbness. Make sure to indicate these symptoms when you seek treatment.
The sternocleidomastoid muscle in your neck is the most common muscle that is injured in a whiplash injury, however scalenes, traps, suboccipitals, and other muscles of the neck are commonly involved as they all work together to hold up your head and in the case of a whiplash injury, to keep your head from flying off! Generally the more severe the collision, the more muscles are affected.
At this point, you are feeling better than you ever thought you could as you are feeling energized and thriving. You have learned a lot about your body, you are moving more efficiently, you understand your body’s cues, and you have a good idea of what to do with these cues. This means you get to try new things, achieve new goals, and conquer new challenges! As you do, we will be here as your resource, as needed, to help you nourish, boost, and refresh your health.
Pain is generally the last symptom to show up and the first to go away. This means that by the time you realize there is a problem, there has been a problem for a long time. Especially for chronic or recurring issues, understanding how you got to where you are is so important for getting to where you want to go. In this stage of your journey, you will resolve underlying dysfunction, remove cheats, and retrain habits. As we aid you in activating your body’s natural healing potential, we will help you regain movement, energy, and body function both inside and outside. Throughout this process, you will start to feel greater ease and inspiration as you restore communication and efficiency in your body. Together, we will constantly assess, observe, and reassess your body’s responses to boost your results.
You are your own person, with your own collection of life events which brought you to where you are today. You deserve to be heard, seen, and treated as the individual you are. Your journey begins with your Discovery Evaluation. This first visit includes your exam which works to uncover the root of your issue(s), new patient diagnostics, and, of course, your first treatment. This is how we will help you begin connecting the dots and feeling better. After your first treatment, we will ask you to observe your body’s responses– good, bad, or indifferent. There is no wrong answer as this is just starting point information and direction for moving forward. In your second visit, we will review this feedback and your diagnostics to further identify potential underlying causes and compensations. We will combine everything we have learned about you, consider your goals, and together create a plan to resolve your concerns from the roots up.
