Why It is Important To Seek Care After a Car Accident

Car accidents are all too common in society today. According to the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT), there were 67,241 traffic accidents in Houston in 2016. Unfortunately, the majority of people in these accidents never seek care.

Often after an accident, people brush off the minor symptoms that they experience, assuming that they will go away on their own. Often they do; however, despite pain reduction, the injuries from the accident may still be in the recovery process. The forces that occur in a car accident are very significant and soft tissue damage takes several weeks to heal. By seeking care, this healing process can be enhanced, decreasing the time to full recovery and preventing compensation injuries from occurring.

The following scenario may sound very familiar:

You are driving home from work, stopped at a red light, and someone from behind fails to hit their breaks in an effective manner. The impact feels very minor, only hitting at about 7 mph. You feel a little startled, adrenaline starting to pump, but no immediate excruciating pain. Therefore, there should be no significant damage to the body. Right?

Not necessarily. This very low impact, at 7 mph, creates between 9 and 18 G’s of force through neck. Those seems to be pretty low numbers, but when it is 9 G’s of force, that means the force going through your neck is 9 times the force of gravity. This amount of force can cause a significant amount of damage. It can actually tear nerves in the brain.

This is the amount of damage from a very minor car accident, now apply this to many other accidents that occur at much higher speeds. The damage could be at that much greater of a level. Therefore, having a medical professional do a thorough examination and treatment is important to not only enhance the healing process but to also ensure that there are no hidden injuries that occurred which may coalesce into something more severe later. Chiropractic assists with the rehabilitative process through pain reduction, range of motion restoration, increasing strength, and optimizing muscle balance.

Pain reduction occurs through muscle relaxation, inflammation and swelling reduction, and stimulation of endorphins. Chiropractic adjustments, electrical muscle stimulation therapies (TENS units), cold laser therapy, and massage specifically target this process. Range of motion increase is achieved through neurological rehabilitation therapies and muscle stretching and strengthening techniques. Of course, having full range of motion is important for your normal activities, such as getting dressed or doing your hair, but it can also have an impact on creating future muscle imbalances. For example, if right knee flexion is limited while walking, the right hip will need to bend even higher to compensate for a lack of mobility. This may, over time, create a muscle imbalance within the right hip, which can then lead to potential hip pain, back pain, and knee pain in the future.

Pain resolution and full range of motion does not necessarily mean that pre-injury status and optimal function have been achieved. It is important to have a functional assessment, in which a more challenging combination of motions are put together. Combining weights with movements and assessing agility activities is important to ensure that re-injury will not occur once more stress is placed upon the body.

Therefore, if you or anyone that you know and love is impacted by a car accident, be sure to have them be evaluated by a medical practitioner. There is no accident that is too minor to have a medical evaluation.

-Motor Vehicle Accident force statistics are from the article by West, Gough, and Harper from the Accident Reconstruction Journal

-Image attribution: https://www.pexels.com/photo/red-and-yellow-hatchback-axa-crash-tests-163016/