Frequently Asked Questions
Can whiplash take years to heal?
Whiplash can take years to heal. The most important decision you can make when dealing with whiplash is to seek out early intervention. The studies are clear. People who begin treatment for whiplash in the first 30 days after an accident get the best results with healing. Mobilization of the injured tissue leads to proper healing. This is why chiropractic care as early intervention is so crucial.
Can whiplash affect you months later?
Whiplash can affect you months later. Many patients report symptoms going away after a couple of months and then returning later. This is why getting chiropractic care early after a whiplash injury is so important. The body requires proper care in order to heal. Chiropractic care, massage therapy, and the introduction of rehabilitative exercises at the appropriate time are crucial to healing a whiplash injury.
Can whiplash symptoms get worse over time?
Whiplash symptoms can worsen over time. Multiple long-term studies have been done on whiplash injuries. As much as 70% of whiplash injury sufferers complain of symptoms 15 years after they were injured! This is why early intervention is so important. If a whiplash injury doesn't heal properly, it can become a lifelong problem.
How long can whiplash injury last?
Acute whiplash injuries can last months. Soft tissue takes time to heal and requires early intervention and care if it is going to heal properly. As much as 70% of whiplash injury sufferers complain of symptoms 15 years after they were injured. Don't be another statistic. Early chiropractic care, massage therapy, and rehabilitative exercises can change the outcome.
What are the neurological signs of whiplash?
Neurological signs of whiplash include headaches, radiating pain into the shoulders and arms, fatigue, brain fog, sleep disturbances, mood changes, and elevated blood pressure. All of these symptoms can be present in patients with whiplash due to the inflammation of the soft tissue around the neck and spine which can lead to nerve irritation.
Can you get permanent damage from whiplash?
Most whiplash injuries lead to permanent injury. That's because most whiplash injury sufferers hope the pain will go away on its own. The most important thing you can do is commit to early care that mobilizes the injured tissue and helps strengthen the muscles and ligaments of the neck over time.
What does severe whiplash feel like?
Severe whiplash typically leaves the sufferer without the ability to move their neck. This can last for several days to weeks. Usually, pain is constant and may include headaches, inability to hold their head up, radiating pain into the upper back/shoulders and arms, sleep disturbances, mood changes, elevated blood pressure, fatigue, and brain fog.
Transcription
Hello everyone, this is Dr. Aaron Seaton with The Chiropractic Place here. We're going to be doing a video talking about car accidents, whiplash and what it does to your health, some of the long-term effects that we see from people with whiplash, and why it's so important to get started on your chiropractic care as early as possible. So, this is a study done in the European Spine Journal back in 2002, and what they did is they tracked hundreds of patients over years and years to understand better the effect of whiplash on patients and what happened. How do they heal? Do they get better? And so what they found is that 55% of patients who have had a whiplash-type trauma in a car accident have had symptoms 17 years later after the accident, so that's huge.
That means over half the people with a whiplash-type injury could have symptoms 17 years down the road. So that's a big wow moment for me, when I saw that research and I said, "Gosh, we need to do a video explaining to our patients who have been in a car accident how important chiropractic care is to them, and why it's so important not to wait on this stuff." The basic symptoms that we see for whiplash-type injuries are neck pain, a lot of headaches, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, visual disturbances happen, ringing in the ears, pain radiating into the shoulder, down into the arm, that's a real common symptom as well.
So this is what to look out for when you've had a car accident, and sometimes you won't even feel these symptoms right after the accident. It might show up a few days later. It could be a week or two later when you start noticing symptoms like that. So hopefully, that lets you know, "Hey, there's been a whiplash injury," and when you hear that, over half the people who have these have symptoms 17 years later. The researchers have been pretty darn clear on this for years, the number one thing that you can do if you've had a whiplash injury is starting mobilizing the tissue immediately, so if somebody has a whiplash injury where their neck's been rocked, the most important thing we can do is start working on that, getting chiropractic care, getting massage therapy, working on that for the next four to eight weeks to really settle that tissue down and make sure scar tissue doesn't form, because a lot of these long-term problems we're seeing with these people is because they didn't seek out the appropriate care following their accident, they kind of just let their body "heal."
The body doesn't heal properly in those circumstances in a lot of cases, and that's why 55% of these people end up having chronic long-term problems from whiplash. So when you have a car accident, give us a call so that we can get started as soon as possible because waiting is the biggest enemy for you when you've had a whiplash. That's what leads to long-term chronic problems is waiting. Putting it off, saying, "Oh, it'll heal on its own," just ignoring the symptoms. Do not do that, don't fall for that. It would be best if you started your chiropractic care and started getting under the proper care to heal properly and hopefully not be one of this 55%. So if you have any questions about car accidents or whiplash injuries, neck pain, headaches, stuff like that, give our office a call. We'd be happy to answer your questions. I'm Dr. Aaron Seaton with The Chiropractic Place.
Call our office today to schedule an appointment to kickstart your healthy life: 530-221-8443
*The transcription is auto-generated by a program and may not be accurate. In order to ensure you get all the information from the video properly, you must watch the video.
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Redding CA, 96003