WHIPLASH / AUTO INJURY
If you have ever been in a car accident than you know that the road to recovery can be long and uncertain. You realize in retrospect how your life has changed dramatically in those split seconds. The moments before the accident you were fine and suddenly your life takes a turn for the worse.
If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, you are suffering from whiplash. If you do not revive immediate treatment for whiplash, these injuries will only get worse. More than half the patients will suffer from long term pain leading to a deterioration in their quality of life.
- Neck pain and/or stiffness
- Blurred vision
- Difficulty swallowing
- Irritability
- Fatigue
- Dizziness
- Pain between the shoulder blades
- Pain in the arms or legs, feet and hands
- Headache
- Low back pain and/or stiffness
- Shoulder pain
- Nausea
- Ringing in the ears
- Vertigo
- Numbness and tingling
- Pain in the jaw or face
Neck Pain
Neck pain and whiplash are so common together that they are nearly synonymous terms. The problem is that neck pain following car accident injury can last years, or even for the rest of your life, after a crash. Research points out the chronic nature of neck injury pain after whiplash. Studies show that approximately 40-50% of those injured in car accidents suffer symptoms years, often decades, later.
The most import thing that you can do for your neck pain after an auto accident is to get the right care, right away. Please do not “wait for the pain to go away”. Pain is a sign that something is wrong, it is your body’s way of calling attention to a problem. If you ignore the pain up front, or mask it with pain killing medications, you may not like the way it presents itself later as the underlying injury degrades over time.
Get the Right Care ASAP for Neck Pain
The sooner you initiate care for neck pain following a whiplash injury, the better your overall chances of recovery are. Imagine if you ignored a broken bone and just let it heal without getting the bone aligned. Would you even consider that? Probably not, because you know that once it heals out of alignment you are likely stuck with it that way for the rest of your life.
Stop Complications Before They Start
What do you think happens to your neck when it heals improperly after whiplash? You got it, your neck likely gives you pain for the rest of your life. Not a pleasant thought! To further complicate matters, once your neck is injured in a car accident, you are 6.5 times more likely to develop degenerative changes to the discs and joints of the spine in the first 5 years following injury. Wow!
You Can Replace Tires, But You Only Get One Neck
Think about a car that is out of alignment. What happens to the tires? They wear out faster than normal and in an uneven pattern. Does it matter how old the car is? Not really. What matters is how long the problem has been there and how severe the problem is. Kind of like a neck that has sustained injury in a car accident that develops degenerative wear and tear within five years after the injury right?
Help for Your Neck Pain is a Phone Call Away
If you are suffering from neck pain, do yourself a favor and call immediately. Dr. Birk has the training and experience to evaluate and care for neck pain after a car crash effectively. Don’t wait for your problem to magically “go away”, only to develop more pain and problems later. Take action now, correct the underlying car accident injuries and facilitate proper healing. Really, your health is just too precious to wait. Do you want to go through life like an old beat up clunker or a high performance masterpiece?
Concussion/ Traumatic Brain Injury
A traumatic brain injury from a car accident happens more often than most people realize. Often a patient will describe feeling “being out of it” or “foggy-headed” immediately following a car crash, along with a headache, dizziness and often, nausea. These are great descriptions of the early effects of a mild traumatic brain injury.
Concussion vs. Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
Often people wonder what is difference between a traumatic brain injury and a concussion? The terms concussion and mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) are many times used interchangeably. Both terms describe injury to the brain; however, with respect to an auto accident, mild traumatic brain injury is often considered a more correct term to use.
How Traumatic Brain Injury Occurs in an Auto Accident
Put an over-ripe peach in a jar and shake the jar back and forth quickly. What happens to the peach? You probably guessed correctly: it bruises easily.
Did you know that your brain is the consistency of soft butter and it sits in a hard bowl of bone called your skull? Now, think about your brain being shaken about in your skull by the sudden and violent whiplash motion of your head and neck in a car accident. What do you think happens to your brain? It gets injured much like the peach did in the jar. And that is, in a nutshell, how a traumatic brain injury happens.
You Don’t Have to Strike Your Head to Get a Concussion
It is important to note that we didn’t have to smack the jar against anything to bruise the peach. The simple motion of shaking the peach back and forth forcibly in the jar produced the bruising. In the same respect, you don’t have to hit your head against anything in a car accident to get a concussion.
You Don’t Have to Lose Consciousness to Get a Brain Injury
Despite popular opinion, you don’t have to get knocked out to injure your brain in an auto accident. It is far more important to evaluate and monitor the symptoms of a concussion following car accident trauma with Dr. Birk, rather than simply relying on whether you thought that you lost consciousness in determining whether you suffered mild traumatic brain injury.
Concussion Symptoms
Here are some of the most common signs of mild traumatic brain injury:
- Headaches
- Nausea
- Dizziness
- Memory difficulties
- Poor concentration
- Light or sound sensitivity
- Difficulty sleeping
- Fatigue
- Ringing in the ears
- Moodiness
- Irritability
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Changes in vision
Whiplash X-Ray - Chiropractor in Vaughan, Ontario
How do we diagnose Whiplash?
The first step is always a thorough history check, we need to know what you've been through to get you where you want. Whiplash can affect areas, so the most important thing we want to do is to locate the root cause of your pain.
We do this by conducting a hands-on examination. After we identify the movements that are causing your pain, we’ll examine the muscles and ligaments in the affected area.
If necessary, we’ll use Digital X-Ray. These images can be used to confirm a diagnosis or rule out causes before finalizing a treatment plan.
Diagnose Whiplash - Chiropractor in Vaughan, Ontario
How do we treat these conditions?
Spinal adjustments
Specific, gentle realignment of the spine using hands on, droptable, and instrumentation to open nerves that may be the true cause of your pain.
Therapeutic Exercises
Specific to your condition and long term improvement, exercises will be done in office and at home to strengthen your body and spine into a new healthy version.
Whole body vibration
WBV provides added benefits to your care in better posture, improved circulation, muscle tone, metabolism, bone density and lymphatic drainage.