Whiplash is a common injury produced by a sudden shock or jolt to the head, which usually happens in a car collision. A whiplash injury can happen twice as fast as it takes your neck muscles to react in order to protect your neck and head.
You don't always have to be hit from behind in a car accident. When your car is T-boned (side impact), your head can be forcibly twisted from side to side. This can be even more dangerous than being struck from behind.
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While most people identify whiplash with car accidents, it can also happen in sports like football, boxing, baseball, hockey, field hockey, volleyball, basketball, or soccer, as well as simple falls from slipping on ice, a throw rug, or a wet floor. Whiplash is caused by your head whipping back and forth or side to side as a result of a work injury or another incident.
What Causes Whiplash?
Whiplash happens when your head tries to keep up with the rest of your body and actually accelerates to an even quicker pace before being dragged to a sudden stop and tossed back the opposite way, similar to the cracking of a whip. Whiplash happens in 80 to 150 milliseconds, and your responses cause the neck muscles to constrict in about 200 milliseconds, too late to protect you.
When you're driving and you're hit from behind, your upper back is the first section of your body to jerk forward, leaving your neck and head behind. The neck then begins to move forward in an attempt to catch up with the body, eventually catching and passing it. According to studies, the neck might deform from a correct backward facing C-shape to an S-shape during this severe activity. Your head will begin to move once your neck has begun to move. Because the average head weighs 8-10 pounds, it acts like a bowling ball on top of your neck, whirling forward quicker than your body and faster than your neck. The forward momentum is abruptly halted, beginning when your body is stopped by the seatbelt. The neck and head, on the other hand, continue to move forward. They've been thrown backwards into the car's headrest. As a result of all of this, your head pulls the top of your neck in one direction (flexion), while your body pulls the bottom of your neck in the opposite direction (hyperextension).
A comparable trauma occurs in your brain. The brain has two densities and floats in cerebrospinal fluid. The inner white matter is more dense than the grey matter on the outside. When your head starts moving forward after a whiplash accident, your brain moves slower, slamming against the back of your skull as your head moves forward and then banging against the front of your skull when your head is yanked back. The grey and white matter in the brain can travel at different speeds, and depending on the severity of the injury, the axons that connect the grey and white matter portions and transmit the brain's nerve impulses can be stretched or ripped. Diffuse axonal shearing is a type of mild traumatic brain damage. All of this can happen in a fraction of a second, and you may not even feel a hit on your head or realize you've been hurt.
A side to side whiplash happens when you are T-boned from the side and your head is thrown from side to side rather than back and forth. The small joints on the side of your neck (cervical spine), known as uncinate processes or joints of luschka, can cause a lot of nerve damage and spinal difficulties.
What Is the Impact of Whiplash on the Body?
Whiplash can be harmful to a person in a variety of ways. The effects of whiplash varies from one person to the next depending on the severity of the injury. In rare situations, people have walked away from incidents without realizing they were hurt until days or weeks later. The following are examples of initial injuries:
Concussion
Joint deterioration
Disc herniation
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a type of mild traumatic brain damage.
Spinal misalignments and subluxations
Muscle strains
Inflammation and nerve injury
Ligament sprains
Tendons in distress
The healing process varies tremendously depending on the type of injury you've experienced. Ligaments, for example, have very limited blood flow and can take anywhere from 2 to 12 months to mend, but a shattered bone can take anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks to recover. In rare circumstances, ligaments never fully recover to their pre-injury state. Because of the injury, these persons may develop chronic pain.
If not managed properly, a stretched tendon can recover incorrectly. Collagen fibers are meant to repair in a parallel pattern when micro tears occur with tendon injuries, but if not treated properly, they can heal in a crisscross fashion, reducing joint range of motion, causing scar tissue, inflammation, and nerve interference.
A research published in the prestigious Journal of Orthopaedic Medicine indicated that chiropractic care improves 74 percent of whiplash patients, and that traditional treatment of people with whiplash symptoms is ineffective.
As you can see, even if you think you're fine, it's a good idea to have a chiropractor check you out after an accident to examine any injuries you may have sustained. It's preferable to discover you're fine or have a minor condition early on than to let it go unchecked. If you don't address your whiplash injuries, you'll end up with more difficulties and degenerative diseases.
Spurs on the bones
Scar tissue formation
Future chronic pain
Degenerative disc disease (DDD) is a type of degenerative
Osteoarthritis degenerative
Disc herniation
Whiplash Symptoms
Whiplash injuries can appear in a variety of ways. Many people experience the agony from their injuries right away, but in other circumstances, it takes the observations of family and friends to notice the differences in an individual — especially when dealing with minor traumatic brain injuries.
Here are a few signs to look out for.
Anxiety
Vision is hazy
Depression
Concentration and attention issues
Vertigo or dizziness
Fatigue
Headaches
Migraines are a type of headache.
Nausea
Neck stiffness and pain
Between the shoulder blades pain
Having trouble swallowing or having problems swallowing
The ears are ringing.
Because many of the muscles that connect from the neck go into the upper back area, upper back pain and stiffness are common.
Radiculopathy of the upper extremity (arm). Numbness or pain that runs down your arms and fingers. This is due to brachial plexus nerve injury (5 nerves that run out from your neck).
Whiplash with a Low Impact
One of the most unexpected aspects of whiplash injuries is how often they are in low-impact collisions. "How can I have whiplash if I wasn't hit that hard?" people often wonder.
The answer has to do with your vehicle's crush zones. Modern cars are intended to crumple and crush in ways that distribute the energy force of an accident away from the occupants of the vehicle and absorb the shock in the crush zone during high-speed collisions. What happens, though, if the impact isn't strong enough to compress the vehicle's crush zone? The car may appear unharmed or have a few scrapes, but ALL of the impact energy is passed to the occupants of the vehicle. It'd be the same as if someone slammed into the back of your car seat instead of the rear bumper. As you can see, because your neck bore the brunt of the impact in the accident, you're more than likely to have a whiplash injury. Keep in mind that a whiplash injury can occur in half the time it takes your neck muscles to brace themselves in an attempt to protect you.
Whiplash Treatment at ChiroSolutions Center
We provide a detailed and thorough consultation when someone comes into our office with a whiplash injury. During the appointment, it is critical for a whiplash patient to inform us of all the symptoms they are experiencing as a result of their injury. Some symptoms, such as nausea, memory loss, inability to concentrate, hesitation commencing speech, and impaired vision, may indicate mild traumatic brain damage, for which additional testing will be ordered. Following the consultation, we perform an examination that includes orthopedic, neurological, and physical exam tests, as well as any necessary spine x-rays. With a whiplash injury, we also take flexion and extension films of the neck to see if there is ligament damage, such as some of the bones sliding forward or backward more than they should — this is called hypermobility of the joints, and it is caused by severe ligament damage.
After that, we construct the optimal treatment strategy, with the chiropractic adjustment being our primary focus as chiropractors. This involves gently realigning the spine and restoring correct range of motion to the joint.
The purpose of spinal adjustments is to realign the spine and get the joints and bones to move appropriately. When the spine is injured in a whiplash accident, the spine is not only misaligned, but the nerves within the joints are also irritated. Furthermore, micro tears in the muscles and ligaments might occur, resulting in a sprain/strain injury with inflammation. So, in addition to the chiropractic adjustment, we also use electric muscle stimulation, heat and cold therapy, massage therapy, and rehabilitative activities to strengthen and stabilize the spine, as well as rehabilitate the spinal muscles, in order to completely correct the condition.
One of the most important things I've found over the years about folks who come to see us quickly after a car accident is that it's easier to repair their spine and help the soft tissues heal properly. When someone waits too long, what happens to the soft tissues – ligaments, tendons, and muscle — is that scar tissue forms as the collagen fibers come together in a crisscross pattern, rather than healing normally in a parallel pattern.
If you have any whiplash injuries or have recently been in an accident, please call ChiroSolutions Center at +1 757-271-0001. Remember that ignoring whiplash will only lead to more degenerative issues in the future. If you know someone who could benefit from this information, please share it with them.
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Name: ChiroSolutions Center
Address: 4460 Corporation Lane Suite 102, Virginia Beach, VA 23462
Phone: +1 757-271-0001
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