Hi everyone. Dr. Steph Pinnow here, your chiropractor for car accident injuries in Sun Prairie, WI. Talking about car accidents, and the three most common injuries that we actually see right here in our office in Sun Prairie.
Now, the first one is I feel like what most people think about when they hear a car accident and that is a whiplash. Now, you might have heard of whiplash, as you know, a painful condition that you have after the accident because of the head looking forward and backward. I just want to give you a little bit of a visual.
So we have the assistance of Raggedy Ann here. And if you think about her seated in a car, and typically whiplash accidents occur from a rear end collision, which is what I’ll demonstrate for you right now.
Types of Car Accident Injuries | Sun Prairie Chiropractic
So let’s say she’s sitting in the car, driving 10 and 2 right? She has to be safe. And a car comes and hits her from behind. What happens is her mid, the mid part of her body, goes forward. Her head comes back and then goes forward. So that’s where that whipping motion occurs.
It causes a lot of damage to all of the tendons, the ligaments, the muscles that are here in the neck. As well as the actual spine itself. It’s subluxation, which you’ve probably heard us talk about many, many times in terms of it makes the vertebrae or the bones of the next shift out of place.
Chiropractic Car Accident Injury Assessment in Sun Prairie, WI
What we do as chiropractors is we put those bones back where they’re supposed to be and we also address all of the soft tissue muscles, ligaments, tendons, any kind of dysfunction that occurs from this whiplash. If you look on the internet about whiplash, you’ll see over and over that it is not a very well understood injury or not much is known about whiplash, which I think is completely false.
Chiropractors know a lot about whiplash, especially Dr. Jonathon and I have extensive training in auto accidents and whiplash. And that is exactly why you should be seeing a chiropractor after any sort of car accident because we are the ones that are best, best at diagnosing and best at treating. Especially whiplash accidents.
Right. So that’s the first one. The second one goes hand in hand with whiplash, and that is concussion. So these two have pretty similar symptoms, I would say. Whiplash involves a lot of neck pain, sometimes shoulder pain, sometimes even like mid back to low back pain.
Car Accident Injury Symptoms, Sun Prairie WI
It often-times comes with a headache or ringing in the ears, dizziness, any of those kinds of neurologic symptoms, concussion basically replicate that.
The reason for that is when you get a concussion, you know, most people think about actually hitting their head on something. So if Raggedy Ann hits her head on the steering wheel, or maybe on the dashboard, that she has concussion from the force of the impact from the head. Kind of true.
That’s at least one part of a concussion. Another part is as if you know if she’s hit from behind, and she has enough force to whip her head enough and that kind of slides her brain into her skull. So a little bit morbid, but that’s the truth. So you don’t necessarily have to hit your head on something in order to have a concussion.
Concussion is a type of brain injury. And I know a lot of times it’s kind of overlooked in terms of, you know, athletes go through a quick concussion protocol and then hopping back on the field that’s beginning to change. You’re starting to hear a lot more about concussions later on in life, and the detriments to the brain.
Chiropractic Car Accident Injury Treatment in Sun Prairie, WI
So, again, chiropractors address whiplash and concussion. We’re the best ones to help reset the nerves and make sure everything is functioning with your brain, in terms of the rest of the spine, the rest of your body. And to help decrease some of those symptoms that you might have headaches, nausea, dizziness, ringing in the ears, all of that.
Alright, so the third most common injury that we see after a car accident is low back pain. I feel like this one isn’t as well known, but it’s really important to address because if you’re thinking about getting hit again we’ll just pretend we’re talking about rear end collision. This might go forward and backward in terms of a head and upper body.
But what’s most secure in the seat is the low back and it happens to absorb most of the shock and most of the impact of the crash. So a lot of times we’ll see strains or sprains in the low back because of that quick, pushing forward impact. You’re still going to, if you get hit in the car accident, you’ll still slide until you hit something and that’s what stops that force.
The thing that stops the force? Your body, right? So low back injuries are super common, especially with the disc or a part of the spine called a facet. So the facet joints can also be damaged in there. Again, chiropractors, low back pain, that’s our jam, right? That’s what we do.
So there you have it. Three most common injuries that we see after a car accident, whiplash concussion, and low back pain. And we are excited to help you recover from a car accident, get back to your normal life, and get back to healing. Thanks so much. We’ll see you soon.
