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Neck and whiplash injuries may pose serious risks to your long-term wellbeing.
A recent study has found that people, who suffered a whiplash injury are more likely to suffer neck pain, shoulder pain, arm pain, and headaches.
In addition, neck injuries and whiplash have also been linked with other serious conditions including dizziness, vertigo, post-concussion syndrome, occipital neuralgia, trigeminal neuralgia, fibromyalgia, and even multiple sclerosis.
One of the biggest challenges for people who suffer neck or whiplash injuries is that they may not appreciate the potential severity of the problem. Or if they do, they don’t know the full array of treatment options.
- Many people shrug off car accidents as being “just a little fender bender.”
- Many people think that they’re okay because they don’t have pain, or the pain went away in a few days
- Other people believe it’s just a soft-tissue injury because they didn’t need to go to the doctor or emergency department
To counter these arguments, check out this video from the University of Hartford called “The Convincer” which shows the impact of a 8kph car accident. They don’t really talk about it, but I want you to look at how the participants’ heads and necks all snap forwards.
Or imagine this for a moment: fall forwards onto the floor, flat on your face, without using your hands to stop you. That is the equivalent of a 40kph car accident. Still “slow” in the grand scheme of things, but I hope you see my point.
Even “minor” or “slow” car accidents can cause issues that you may not even realise!
What if I don’t have pain after a car accident?
One of the biggest mistakes people can make about car accidents is not doing anything about them except maybe taking a few pain killers or anti-inflammatories.
Your neck contains three general types of nerve receptors.
- Pain receptors
- Pressure receptors that affect your muscle tone
- Proprioceptors that govern your sense of balance.
Here’s the thing: only one of these nerve types produces pain! The other two don’t!! What it means is that you can actually have an injury but not necessarily feel pain!
Furthermore, gif you do experience pain, it should be a warning sign that something is damaged and that you should probably do something about it.
If you broke your arm, would you simply take anti-inflammatories and pain killers until the pain went away? Uh, no. You’d go to the orthopaedist, who would set your arm in a cast to make sure that it heals right.
So why should a neck or whiplash injury be any different?
Even though it is a soft tissue injury, those soft tissues need to heal the right way! So if there is damage to the muscles, ligaments, joints or nerves, do you just want to leave that to chance that things might heal the right way?
Or does it make more sense to perhaps get things looked at by a qualified specialist, doctor or other healthcare professional who works with neck injuries to make sure that you have the best chance for recovery?
Don’t leave a soft tissue whiplash injury to heal “by chance”
Following a car accident or other whiplash injury, you typically have 4-6 weeks before the injury “heals” the wrong way. If that happens, it becomes a chronic issue that can take much longer to resolve, often because it stops producing pain signals.
There are many options available when it comes to care for neck injuries including your GP/medical doctor, physiotherapist, massage therapist, chiropractor, or orthopaedic doctor or nerve specialist.
One of the best possible places that you can start is with a specific type of chiropractic doctor you may never have heard of: a Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Doctor.
Blair upper cervical is a special division of chiropractic developed and researched in the USA by its founder, Dr William Blair. Unlike general spinal manipulation, there is no twisting or cracking the neck. Everything is based on precision.
One of the foundational premises of the Blair technique is that every human being is constructed differently on the inside and outside. So, when taking standard x-rays, CTs or MRIs of the head or neck - which are taken from standard angles - it is often possible to miss seeing what is actually happening at each of the joints in the neck.
This may well be the reason why so many people who experience pain or other problems get so frustrated because their tests all come back as “normal” when they know intuitively that things are not!
The reason this matter is because if is is the joints that have been injured, causing entrapment, misalignment and irritation to the nerve receptors, that may well be the source of the problem.
So by treating each person as an individual and taking customised types of images so that you can see exactly what is happening, it helps the Blair upper cervical chiropractic doctor to know the exact location, direction and degree of the injury.
Most importantly, these images show the chiropractic what has happened and what needs to be done in order to help the problem!
One of the major differences between Blair upper cervical chiropractic care and general spinal manipulation is that the correction can be made without twisting, popping or cracking the neck. You see, when you know the location, direction and degree of the misalignment, you usually need only the amount of force you would use to click a pan to help release the segment ultimately so that the body is able to regain control of the motion and allow the joint to heal.
And as that happens, we hope and expect to see improvement! Of course, there can still be other factors including muscle damage, torn ligaments and so forth, which likely require additional rehab and physiotherapy. My point is that is the alignment and motion through your neck is not proper because of the injury, none of the other exercises will work quite as well as they could.
Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Doctor Brisbane
Dr Jeffrey Hannah is an advanced certified Blair upper cervical chiropractic doctor with Atlas Health Australia in North Lakes (north Brisbane). D He is an international lecturer, publisher author and recognised leader in the field of upper cervical chiropractic care.
Our practice, Atlas Health Australia, is the premiere upper cervical chiropractic healthcare centre in Brisbane. We help people with neck injuries and associated health conditions find solutions so that they can enjoy the quality of life that they truly desire.
We believe in the innate health potential for every human being to be well. Through the work that we do in our North Brisbane practice, it is our mission to bring Blair upper cervical chiropractic care to communities throughout Australia.
Our practice offers a complementary 15-minute over the phone consultation so that you may be able to discuss your condition and ask any questions so that you can decide if care may be right for you.
If you would like to schedule a time to speak with Dr Hannah, you can reach our office at 07 3188 9329, or click the Contact Us link at the top of this page.
It is our privilege to assist you to the best of our ability.
Atlas Health Australia - “Hope, healing and wellbeing from above-down, inside-out.”
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Leddy JJ, Baker JG, Merchant A, et al. Brain or strain? Symptoms alone do not distinguish physiologic concussion from cervical/vestibular injury. Clin J Sport Med. 2015 May;25(3):237-42. doi: 10.1097/JSM.0000000000000128. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25051194
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