Can a Chiropractor help with car accident injuries?
Can a Chiropractor Help with Car Accident Injuries?
You’ve already suffered the emotional trauma of a car accident injuries sustained during the process can make it even more difficult to recover fully. To further complicate matters, some injuries sustained in a car accident aren’t immediately obvious.
Why Car Accident Injuries Can Be Difficult to Treat
The bruises, cuts, and abrasions are visible to the naked eye and the need for treatment is immediately clear. When it comes to invisible injuries, like whiplash, treatment can be a bit more challenging simply because patients often don’t seek treatment until they feel pain. By this point, tissue damage and swelling have a limited range of motion and wreaked havoc with the body.
A change of 2.5 miles-per-hour can injure the neck, which means even low-speed, minor collisions can cause physical damage. Despite a common misconception, you also don’t have to be involved in a rear collision to sustain whiplash; frontal accidents are the contributing factor for up to 30% of car accident injuries involving the neck.
It can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to feel the full effects of whiplash, which include headaches, soreness, pain in the upper back and neck area and dizziness. These symptoms are caused by the swelling and scarring of microtears in ligaments and tissues, so the sooner you seek treatment, the more responsive your body will be. Waiting until the pain sets in means you’re waiting for the swelling and inflammation to cause systemic difficulties.
Even if your accident was minor and you think you’re fine, it’s always best to see a chiropractor for an evaluation and any necessary treatment as soon as possible. In addition to catching injuries before they worsen, you’ll be documenting injuries immediately and increasing your likelihood of successfully filing insurance claims when you were not at fault for the accident.
Drug-Free Treatment for Car Accident Injuries
Chiropractic treatment for car accident injuries takes a more conservative approach, with a non-invasive treatment that doesn’t include prescription painkillers. Addiction risk aside, these drugs really just mask the injury by silencing your body’s natural alarm system: pain. The damage is not healed by painkillers, only hidden.
Chiropractic care for car accident injuries provides pain relief by actively addressing the cause of pain, rather than prescribing a medication to hide it. By extension, long-term healing is promoted for better outcomes and a lowered chance of chronic pain. Being able to avoid the prescription painkiller cycle, including withdrawal even when used as directed, can make all the difference in your recovery from a car accident.
Restoring Range of Motion and Soothing Inflammation
After a car accident, injuries to the spine and surrounding tissues can have far-reaching implications. When swelling and inflammation limit your range of motion, it means your body is also not able to heal itself at full capacity due to the inflammation. A chiropractic adjustment can not only restore your range of motion much sooner after a car accident but also relieves the inflammation which inhibits your body’s natural healing abilities.
