WHIPLASH / AUTO INJURY

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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 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.

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.

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!

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.