What My Chiropractor Taught Me About Accident Injuries
Unfortunately, accident injuries are very common these days.
No matter what the cause or who caused the accident, whether the injury was severe or minor, many injury victims have many questions after their accident.
It’s essential to know what to do after an accident, especially if you plan on filing a personal injury claim.
You may be asking, how does chiropractic care work after a car accident?
Knowing how to cover your bases both for insurance purposes and for your overall health, healing, and recovery from your injuries is vital after an accident.
Any person involved in an accident should first focus on their physical health, and that’s where chiropractic care comes in.
What many people don’t realize is that chiropractic care is an excellent treatment for accident injuries.
Your chiropractor can help heal your injuries, work with your insurance company, and they can teach you a lot along the way.
What You Should Do At The Scene Of The Accident
The scene of a car accident can be chaotic, so it’s important to know what to do ahead of time.
After checking to make sure you’re okay, you should check on the others involved in the accident.
If you or someone else requires immediate medical attention, call 911 right away.
If no one needs medical attention, you should still call 911 so a police officer can be sent to the scene.
The responding officer will write up a police report, take pictures and statements, and ensure everyone stays safe.
Before the officer arrives, you should limit what you say to any other person involved in the accident.
You don’t want to accidentally admit fault or say something that can be twisted and used against you later.
Don’t even apologize because that can be taken as an admission of guilt.
Instead of socializing, you can take pictures, write down what you remember of the accident, get information from eyewitnesses and try to move to a safe place off the main roadway.
If you’ve suffered any car accident injuries that you are aware of, write them down too.
It’s important for your recovery to know when your injury symptoms began because some can be delayed.
Common Injuries After Car Accidents
Traumatic Brain Injuries
Traumatic brain injuries have the potential to change your life completely.
These types of head injuries are common in car accidents because it’s very easy for your head to hit a window, seat, steering wheel, or anything else during the impact of the collision.
A traumatic brain injury can change the way your brain functions, processes information, and handles emotions.
Some people can recover from a TBI to some degree, depending on the type and severity of the damage. Treating your injury may be a lifelong process.
Soft Tissue Injuries
Another common car accident injury, or type of car accident injury, is soft tissue injury.
These types of injuries consist of damage to your body’s connective tissue.
Your connective tissues are your muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
Soft tissue injuries are the most common type of injury after a car accident, and they can take many forms.
For example, a whiplash injury, an injury to the neck and upper back, is a soft tissue injury.
With whiplash, your muscles and ligaments are stretched due to the sudden movements imposed on your head and neck in the collision.
These same movements and forces can cause soft tissue injuries in other areas of your body as well.
It’s common for motor vehicle accidents to cause mid-back and low-back muscle sprains.
Sometimes more serious back injuries, like spinal cord injuries, occur because of the force against the spine.
Neck or Back injuries
Like we just mentioned, the intense and rapid force placed on your body during a collision can cause damage to your soft tissues.
But these injuries can be much more serious than just a mild strain.
In addition to soft tissue injuries, sometimes the force of a collision causes the tissue between the spine’s vertebrae to balloon out or rupture.
That stress applied to your neck and back can cause herniations or ruptures of the discs in your spine.
This is called a “herniated disc.”
Herniated discs can put pressure on and inflame nerves coming out of the spine.
This often leads to very severe pain, loss of feeling, and even loss of control of your muscles, usually in your arms or legs.
These symptoms might occur right away and develop in the weeks and months following an auto accident.
If you’re still in pain several days after the accident or have a history of neck or back issues, you may need to consult with a specialist to determine if you may have sustained a herniated disc.
These injuries, while not always permanent, will take some time to heal.
Chiropractic care is a crucial step in returning to your healthy self.
If you see a chiropractor right away, you may be able to avoid surgery, but sometimes surgery is necessary if you have sustained a serious neck or back injury.
Why Chiropractors Are Excellent At Treating Accident Injuries
During car wrecks, whether it’s a frontal accident or a rear-end collision, your cervical spine or your neck can make an abnormal S-shape.
That forces the upper bones into a hyper-flexed position and the lower bones into a hyperextended position.
The primary focus of chiropractic care is to restore your body’s ability to heal itself.
Unlike harmful medications and invasive surgeries, chiropractic care treats the root cause of the pain and discomfort and offers a permanent solution, not one that just masks symptoms.
Chiropractic adjustments and spinal manipulations realign your spine to take the pressure off the affected nerves.
This gives you quick relief from your symptoms, and with proper spine alignment, oxygen and nutrient-rich blood can flow freely to the injury to promote self-healing.
Even if you feel fine and you don’t feel like you’ve suffered any type of injury, you should still visit an experienced chiropractor immediately after a car crash.
Sometimes severe injuries aren’t apparent but still require immediate attention.
Seeing a chiropractor after an accident can do the following:
Reduced Pain
By realigning your spine and relieving pressure off of impinged nerves and tense muscles, your chiropractor will provide you with almost immediate relief from your pain.
This also allows your body to release pain-relieving hormones, which will also help minimize pain.
Restored Range of Motion
Another common symptom many people experience after an auto accident is stiffness in their neck and back.
This often occurs due to misaligned joints in your spine, scar tissue development, and inflammation.
Chiropractic care from an experienced chiropractor can restore and improve your range of motion by mobilizing and realigning the spine during spinal adjustments.
All-Natural Non-Invasive Treatment
The thing most people like about chiropractor care is that it doesn’t carry the risk that comes with surgery or the adverse side effects of medication.
Chiropractic care can treat the root cause of your injury without harmful side effects like nausea, bleeding, allergic reactions, and more.
Schedule a Chiropractic Appointment Today
That’s just a small portion of what my chiropractor taught me about common car accident injuries.
The main thing they taught me, though, is that it is imperative to seek medical treatment right away after an accident, no matter how you feel.
Even though you feel fine at the scene of the accident, you may have physical injuries or even psychological injuries you aren’t aware of yet.
The chiropractors with Advanced Injury Care Clinic can help you find quick relief for a wide range of musculoskeletal issues or car accident injuries.
To schedule your Free Consultation with Advanced Injury Care Clinic so you can start your road to recovery, click the button below.
Table of Contents
- What You Should Do At The Scene Of The Accident
- Common Injuries After Car Accidents
- Traumatic Brain Injuries
- Soft Tissue Injuries
- Neck or Back Injuries
- Why Chiropractors Are Excellent At Treating Accident Injuries
- Reduced Pain
- Restored Range of Motion
- All-Natural Non-Invasive Treatment
- Schedule A Chiropractic Appointment Today
