What Your Body Goes Through in an Auto Accident

Considering that the fastest person can only run about 18 miles per hour (30 kilometers per hour), your body is moving at speeds that are unnatural when it is in a motor vehicle. There is a lot of kinetic energy involved. That means when you are in an auto accident, some of that kinetic energy is absorbed by your body. In other words, you are hit by metal with a lot of force. That is why bones break and a lot of damage is done to muscles and organs. Besides broken bones and injured internal organs, people in a car accident almost always suffer from injuries that are invisible to the naked eye and cannot be picked up by X-rays.The first is whiplash, damage to the neck tissue that happens when the head and neck suddenly move back and forth beyond their range of motion. The pain and stiffness may manifest days or even weeks after the accident. For some people the pain eventually goes away but for others it persists indefinitely until it is treated.Another injury that might happen in an accident is a herniated disc (also known as ruptured disc or slipped disc) of the spine. Discs are soft tissue that is filled with a jelly like substance that are found between the vertebrae. Their role is to cushion the vertebrae and to keep them in their positions while also allowing you to move freely. The spine is made up of 33 vertebrae total. I don’t know about you but that screams to me that you are built to move and when you injure a disc you cannot move.  A herniated disc is one that has slipped out of place or has ruptured. In some cases, the herniated disc presses on a nerve causing serious back pain for many years, or for the rest of the injured person’s life if they do not address it or improperly address it. A third injury is damage to the nerves, the muscles and the ligaments. This damage is not easy for doctors to pick up because it does not appear on X-ray images. They cause a lot of incapacitating pain long after the accident. The standard medical approach is to suppress the pain with pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs with the hope that the damage will correct itself. This approach does not address the source of the problem so the scar tissue might heal in abnormal ways, making movement painful and unbearable for many years, even for the rest of the injured person’s life. These injuries need the help of a chiropractor who will address the source of the problem by rehabilitating the spine from the inside out. The chiropractor helps to heal the nerves and soft tissue, and also realigns the damaged spinal structure and function. It is only after the adjustment is done by the chiropractor that the injured person’s body begins to heal properly and the pain goes away. As a matter of fact, any person who has been in an auto accident should see a chiropractor after the usual hospital treatment. Even if there is no pain or stiffness it does not mean that the muscles, joints and spine were not damaged. The chiropractor will examine the body to evaluate its health, and then give an accurate and safe treatment plan that will prevent any pain from developing.