Whiplash Treatment – What you need to know to make the best decision regarding your care.

There are over 28 million car accidents in the United States every year, so if you’ve been injured and are seeking whiplash treatment, you’re not alone. Many people, including most doctors, believe that in a car accident most of the pain comes from muscles that have been pulled or strained.

As a result, they hope that the problem will go away by itself or get better with time.

If you’ve recently been in a car accident and are suffering from any of the following then there might be cause for concern:

 

• Neck pain
• Pounding headaches
• Sharp shooting pain in the arms or legs
• Numbness and tingling
• Unrelenting muscle aches and pains
• Difficulty sleeping at night
• Blurred or double vision

This article might be the single most important message you’ll ever read about your injuries and finding the right whiplash treatment.

 

One Minute That Can Change Your Life

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It’s amazing how fast life can change. One minute you’re sitting at a red light, minding your own business, and the next minute it feels like you’ve been run over by a freight train. Now your neck hurts, your head is throbbing, and you have no clue what to do next.

If you’re feeling the symptoms listed above, you’re likely suffering from whiplash. This is one of the most misunderstood conditions in all of healthcare, and as a result there’s a lot of misinformation, bad advice, and flat out lies that can steer you in the wrong direction and keep you from getting the proper whiplash treatment.

Don’t risk ruining your health, your settlement, or you legal case- keep reading to learn how to choose the right doctor for the whiplash treatment you need for your car accident injury.

Choosing the right doctor for your whiplash treatment:

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This leads us to the first thing you must know about choosing the right doctor for your whiplash treatment:

1. Most Whiplash Injuries Are NOT “Muscle Strains”

It is very common to go to an emergency room or urgent care center after a car accident, and have all sorts of x rays, CT scans, and other tests. In almost all cases these imaging studies do not show any fractures or dislocations, and the patient is given a few medications and told they have a “sprain/strain” or “whiplash” and there’s no serious injuries.

The problem with this is that research shows most of the pain from car crashes comes from ligaments in the spine that have been stretched or torn. Ligaments are the soft tissue that holds the bones in your neck and back together.

These ligaments contain nerves that sense pain, so when you stretch them or tear them it hurts. This causes your muscles to tighten up in an attempt to protect the injured areas. Anyone who has suffered this type of injury knows just how serious the pain can be. It’s even more frustrating when your doctor just doesn’t seem to understand why you’re hurting, and the medications aren’t doing anything to give you relief.

Injuries to the ligaments can also take a few hours or much longer to cause any symptoms. Don’t be fooled by the fact that you may not have felt pain right after the crash. It is very common for the real pain to not set in for days or even weeks after the crash. The earlier you’re checked out by a doctor who specializes in whiplash treatment, the better chances you have for a good recovery without permanent damage.

When ligaments have been torn, scar tissue begins to form in as little as one week. Because of this, you must see a doctor who can help you get your back and neck moving again as soon as possible. The first few weeks of whiplash treatment following the accident can be some of the most critical.

So how do you find out if you have torn ligaments in your auto accident? Normal x rays, MRIs, or CT scans done in hospitals are very useful for finding broken bones, dislocations, and disc herniations, but they don’t show injured ligaments.

Only very special sets of x rays taken by a doctor who knows how to look for torn ligaments will show the true cause of your pain. These x rays can be used as concrete proof to your insurance company or your lawyers that you have very real injuries. The treatment for ligament injuries can vary significantly depending on how your injury occurred, how severe it is, and many other factors. This is why it’s so important to have a chiropractor who understands the proper whiplash treatment and diagnosis protocols to get the best results for you.

2. Ice Your Way to Recovery From Auto Accident Injuries

If you feel like every muscle in your body is aching with pain, then you’re experiencing first-hand the inflammation that occurs after a traumatic injury. Inflammation is good in small doses, but when it gets out of control after a car crash it can feel like your entire body is on fire.

So what home remedy that’s available in every house in America can you use to help speed your recovery?

Picture a locker room after a professional football game. Wounded athletes are scattered all over, nursing their injuries with big bags of, you guessed it…..ICE!

Can you believe how well icing injuries must work if multi-million dollar athletes, who have access to the most state of the art treatment, use it after every practice and every game? It really is that simple.

Too many people get injured in a car crash and immediately break out their heating pad. The soothing warmth seems to help relax tight muscles and calm frazzled nerves. The only problem is that it is also slowing down the healing process and actually making the inflammation worse.

Here’s an easy trick: if you don’t have good quality gel ice packs, you can use a bag of frozen peas in a pinch. Just make sure to cover them with a towel so you don’t freeze yourself! This simple whiplash treatment can significantly boost the healing rate of your injuries in the comfort of your own home.

But remember, there’s no study that shows icing by itself is an effective whiplash treatment. You’ll need to consult with a chiropractor who has extensively studied car accident injuries and understands what your body needs to properly recover. Your whiplash treatment plan will likely contain a combination of various gentle chiropractic adjustments, stretches, exercises, and physical therapies to get the best results for you.

3. Research Shows That Untreated Car Accident Injuries Can Lead to Arthritis, Disc Degeneration, Scar Tissue, and Chronic Pain

In our office we don’t just take care of patients who have been in recent car accidents. I can’t tell you the number of times a patient has told me they’ve had neck pain for the last 30 years. After I take one look at their x rays, I’ll ask, “So when was your whiplash injury?”

Often times I’ll get a look as if I asked the question in Chinese! But almost every time there’s a pause, and an “Oh yeah, I did get rear-ended by that lady when I was college…but I wasn’t really hurt.”

Every trauma we experience effects the body, and some injuries can have consequences far beyond a few weeks or months of pain. The ligament injuries we’ve discussed that often occur in a crash can lead to years of chronic problems if not properly diagnosed and treated.

This is not a new discovery in the medical community. Doctors and insurance companies have known for years that the injuries that occur in car crashes are not just short-term problems. When the ligaments, nerves, discs, or joints in the spine are damaged, this often speeds up the rate of wear and tear.

So what can be done to prevent this? The most important thing is early treatment. We see patients in our office who wait several weeks or even several months to seek treatment, hoping their pain would “just go away on its own.” If the injury is relatively minor this may be the case, but the problem is that without seeing a qualified physician, there’s no way to tell what type of injury you have.

Whiplash treatment after an injury

Studies also show that early and frequent whiplash treatment after an injury gets the best results. Gentle chiropractic care, therapy, and rehab to get the joints moving again and prevent scar tissue from forming is critical in the early stages. This is true with any major trauma to the body. If you’ve had surgery in the last 5 years to the knee or shoulder you probably had a therapist working with you the day after the operation trying to get the joints moving again so scarring couldn’t set in.

Don’t neglect your injuries today and end up paying for it for the rest of your life. It’s not worth chronic pain and suffering, especially when there are so many good whiplash treatment options to help you recover properly and heal from your injuries.