With today’s technology at the tip of our fingers, more and more car accidents and whiplash injuries are happening around the country and Vancouver, specifically. Whiplash is a commonly used term to describe the mechanism of injury sustained in a car accident. This type of injury can cause structural damage to the neck, mid back, and lower back. It is commonly called a flexion/extension type of injury where the head and neck move rapidly forward and then backwards. In fact, research many years ago showed that a car accident with rear impact of just 10mph is enough to cause significant structural damage to the ligaments and muscles surrounding the bones of the spine.
In addition, car accidents cause a Vertebral Subluxation where the bone becomes displaced and creates significant pressure or pinching on the spinal nerves. This may create a large amount of discomfort, however, in only ten percent of the cases does this actually cause pain. Ninety percent of the time, when someone causes a subluxation they won’t feel the pain until weeks, months, and sometimes even years later. It is vital that every person involved in any type of car accident have their spine checked as soon as possible by a Chiropractor. The amount of damage to the nervous system and surrounding nerves can go unnoticed at first by the injured party, but can cause many problems later in life such as arthritis or degeneration of the spine, headaches, neck pain, trouble concentrating, changes in blood pressure, spinal pain, radiation into the extremities, dizziness, trouble concentrating just to mention a few.
This mechanism of injury is often caused by high impact sports also such as football, rugby, skiing, snowboarding and surfing. Many children even suffer this type of injury who play sports in these high impact situations leading to health issues later in life. In fact, recent research showed that playing in an NFL game was equivalent to being in 10 car accidents.
If you have been involved in a car accident, whether you are at fault or not, you may have suffered some type of whiplash injury, get checked by your Burnaby Chiropractor right away.
