Car accidents are incredibly traumatic to experience, both physically and mentally.
Despite the seriousness of the aftermath of a car accident, people can sometimes convince themselves that being in one isn’t a big deal. This method of coping can be harmful because if someone who has been in an accident refuses to seek medical attention, believing they are fine or only minorly injured, they could miss a hidden injury and subsequently worsen it.
At Utah Accident Clinic, we specialize in chiropractic care for car accident victims. When the human frame is subjected to high-impact forces, there can be invisible internal damage that you don’t feel immediately.
This internal damage can worsen drastically if left unchecked and cause permanent damage and sometimes disability. We are here to do everything we can to help you heal quickly and painlessly and prevent permanent damage to your frame.
Why Do Car Accidents Result in Back Pain?
Car accidents, regardless of severity, involve three collisions: the collision of the vehicle, the collision of your body, and the collision of your internal organs. The faster the vehicle is going at the time of the accident, the more severe your injuries will be because the crash force will be greater.
Crash force is calculated by multiplying your body weight by the vehicle’s speed during the accident. In an accident where a vehicle goes 50 miles per hour, a 100-pound individual is subjected to 5,000 pounds of crash force. This is a lot for the human body to attempt to handle and can have devastating effects on the human frame.
These injuries to the human frame – your skeletal system, muscles, joints, and ligaments – fall under a chiropractor’s expertise. Many of these injuries are caused by whiplash, which is the whipping motion your body experiences due to the force of an impact at the time of the collision.
Your Spine
Your spine is broken down into three sections: the cervical spine, the lumbar spine, and the thoracic spine. Included in these sections are your spinal cord itself, your facet joint, and your vertebrae. Understanding your spine can help you understand the long-term damage from not seeking timely treatment.
Your spinal cord controls your entire central nervous system. This group of nerves delivers all of the impulses in your body that create movement and run through a canal in the center of your vertebrae. Damage to the spinal cord can cause severe, long-term consequences, such as paralysis. Your spinal cord is protected by interlocking bones called vertebrae. Facet joints help you move smoothly, buffered by fluid and soft cartilage.
When someone suffers an injury to the spine, generally they feel the effects beneath the injured area. The higher up a spinal injury is, the more devastating it can be.
Symptoms of Back and Neck Injury After a Collision
When you are in a traumatic incident such as a car accident, your body responds by producing the hormone adrenaline. Adrenaline is a painkiller, meaning it can disguise your injuries even from yourself.
External symptoms such as bruising or swelling take hours to develop, and the discomfort from inflammation can sneak up on you.
Because the symptoms of back and neck injuries are often delayed due to adrenaline, it’s all the more important to seek prompt medical attention and to be aware of signs to look out for.
Immediate symptoms of back and neck injuries can look like this:
- Extreme pain in the neck, back, or head
- Limited range of movement in your extremities
- Loss of movement in your fingers or toes
- Tingling, burning sensations
- Numbness
- Poor or complete loss of balance
- Immediate onset of a headache
- Sudden incontinence
- Struggling to breathe
- Finding yourself crumpled or twisted into an unnatural or painful position after the crash
More delayed symptoms of back and neck injuries can appear as:
- Headaches that persist for several days after the accident
- Pain, tenderness, swelling, or bruising of the belly
- Weakness
- Inability to lift things, even if they aren’t cumbersome
- Pinching in the shoulders, neck, or back
- Ongoing feelings of tingling or numbness in the extremities
- A sudden decrease in hearing
- A sudden decrease in vision
- Sudden development of feelings of stress, anxiety, or panic for no identifiable reason
Common Car Accident Injuries
Car accidents can cause many injuries; attempting to list them all wouldn’t be feasible. Your chiropractor can specifically help with injuries relating to your skeletal and orthopedic systems (the musculoskeletal or locomotor systems), encompassing your muscles, bones, and ligaments.
Orthopedic Car Accident Injuries
Any injury affecting your tendons, ligaments, joints, muscles, and bones can be classified as an orthopedic injury. They can be broken down into upper extremity injuries, lower extremity injuries, and soft tissue injuries.
These injuries include:
- Tendon injuries, such as inflammation, tears, and ruptures
- Ligament injuries, such as sprains and tears
- Whiplash
- Spinal column damage, especially:
- Herniated discs
- Pinched nerves
- Vertebra fracture
- Dislocated joints, especially in
- Shoulders
- Elbows
- Fingers
- Knees
- Hips
- Wrists
- Ankles
- Jaws
- Soft tissue damage
- Muscle injuries, such as strains and ruptures
- Nerve damage
- Shoulder impingement
- Torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament, located in the middle of your knee)
- Torn MCL (medial collateral ligament, located in the inner part of your knee)
Skeletal Car Accident Injuries
Skeletal car accident injuries encompass broken or fractured bones. The most common breaks and fractures following a car accident are as follows:
- Femur, fibula, or tibia fractures when there is a high-impact collision
- Rib fractures, most often caused by airbags or seat belts
- Hip fractures, which are by far the most common
- Arm fractures, especially if the victim tries to shield themselves from the impact
- Wrist fractures, because wrist bones are particularly fragile
- Back fractures, mainly if the accident occurs from behind or head on
- Skull or facial fractures can happen when the victim hits the windshield, especially if they were not wearing a seatbelt
- Pelvic fractures, which are common in severe motorcycle accidents
This is by no means a complete list, and if you have broken or fractured a bone that is not on this list, it does not mean that your injury is not worth treating.
See a doctor if you are experiencing any amount of pain following your car accident. Ideally, you will seek medical care directly after your accident, regardless of how “okay” you may be feeling. However, if you have been waiting for someone to tell you it’s time to see a medical professional, here it is.
Evaluating Your Pain
Many people feel nervous when seeking medical attention. Going to the doctor’s office can feel intimidating. Our team at Utah Accident Clinic understands that after the trauma of a car accident, the last thing you want to go through is an uncomfortable or prolonged experience at the doctor’s office.
We will do everything possible to make things as painless as possible, but knowing what to expect can be helpful. However, if there is anything else we can do to put you at ease, all you have to do is ask. We are also happy to field phone calls to help prepare you for the procedures to expect during your visit.
Knowing what questions you may be asked can help you gather your thoughts. Your chiropractor will likely start by asking questions to determine how best to help you. These questions will likely be some form of:
- Have you experienced back pain or injury before your accident?
- Where is the pain most severe?
- How much pain are you in on a scale of 1 to 10?
- What sort of collision did you experience? (A rear-end collision versus a side impact collision have different effects on the body, and knowing which occurred can help determine a treatment path more quickly)
- How long ago was the car accident?
- Did you seek any medical attention after the accident before coming here?
- How fast were the vehicles going at the time of the collision?
The staff at Utah Accident Clinic recognizes that it can be difficult and often traumatic to recount the reality of your accident, and we will do everything we can to make you feel as safe and comfortable as possible during the process.
Why See a Chiropractor?
Reduce Inflammation
When you are injured, you will likely experience inflammation. To some extent, this is an expected part of the healing process. However, if inflammation crosses a certain threshold, it can cause extreme discomfort and damage your soft tissues.
Excessive inflammation in the spinal column can cause you to experience extreme stiffness and pain that worsen after periods of inactivity. If your back pain is caused by excessive inflammation, you will probably feel worse when you wake up.
Your chiropractor can help to reduce inflammation by realigning your spine, often through spinal manipulation. This will encourage your body to cut back on the production of cytokine, which causes inflammation.
Reduce Pain
During chiropractic adjustments, your body naturally produces hormones such as oxytocin, neurotensin, and cortisol. When these hormones are released into your bloodstream, they function as pain relievers.
Recover Range of Motion
A neck or back injury after a car accident can cause a restriction or total loss of range of motion, often in your arms and shoulders. Being unable to lift your arms past a certain point without severe pain can severely impact your day-to-day function. You may need help to do basic things you need to do to take care of yourself.
Ignoring your pain, or attempting to handle your limited range of motion on your own could result in worsening of symptoms, or possibly permanent damage. The sooner you seek help, the better chance you will have of making a full recovery.
Your chiropractor can help you recover your range of motion through chiropractic adjustments to your spine.
Speed Up the Healing Process
Your body’s response to injury is to produce scar tissue, using collagen to repair your muscles and tendons. To an extent, this is normal and will most likely heal appropriately over time.
However, forming scar tissue can be extremely painful and cause chronic pain for weeks, months, and sometimes even years. Your chiropractor can help you manage this pain by using special techniques to break up the scar tissue. This will also help your injuries heal more quickly.
Prevent the Need for Surgery
The longer you wait to seek medical treatment after a car accident, the more likely you will eventually need to take severe, invasive measures to regain your health. This includes invasive surgeries. Making an appointment with your chiropractor as soon as possible can help prevent this reality from occurring, saving you pain, time, and money.
Services We Offer
Our talented team of care practitioners offers a multi-disciplinary approach to eliminating your pain. Every patient we see gets a personalized treatment plan. Oftentimes, this plan is a combination of the services we offer, which include spinal x-ray evaluation, massage therapy, chiropractic care, and in-house physical therapy programs.
Spinal manipulation has been around since 400 B.C., and has evolved over the centuries to treat neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, and headaches. It is pretty self-explanatory. Your clinician will physically manipulate your spine using their hands, or a chiropractic tool.
Soft tissue healing is helpful after car accidents, because the traumatic incident often results in muscle groups shutting down. Soft tissue healing can help reactivate these muscle groups, to alleviate the consequential pains and help with bruises, strains, and sprains.
Muscle stretching therapy is meant to alleviate the extreme tightness that most accident victims complain of. The tightness caused by a car accident is most often caused by overstretching the muscles at the point of impact.
Because the damage was caused by overstretching, it is important to let your chiropractor help you come up with a plan, and a list of safe exercises you can do to alleviate your pain without worsening your injuries.
Finding the Right Chiropractor for You After Your Salt Lake City Accident
If you have suffered a car accident and are in pain, don’t wait to seek help. Utah Accident Clinic is here to help create a personalized treatment plan to address your injuries.
Our staff is experienced at working with our clients’ auto insurance companies to ensure that money is not a barrier to receiving care. We also offer free consultations so that you can confirm that Utah Accident Clinic is right for you.
We also specialize exclusively in car accident-related injuries, so you can trust us when we say we understand what you’re going through and know how to help. Call our compassionate Utah Accident Clinic staff today at (801)-701-3271 to get your questions answered. Utah Accident Clinic: your journey to wellness begins here!