If you have ever been in a car accident, then you know how overwhelming and stressful it can be. It’s common for the actual time surrounding the crash to be a blur in the memories of victims-for many people, they are only able to process what actually happened when they are safe at home. When a person goes through something traumatic (such as a car accident), their body releases adrenaline into their system. Adrenaline makes your heart beat faster, sending more blood to your muscles, making your brain more alert, and giving you more energy. This can help you stay safe in dangerous situations.
However, adrenaline rushes can also prevent people from experiencing pain and realizing that they were injured. Being in a car accident can cause a person to go into fight-or-flight mode, where your body instinctively prioritizes your survival. Once you’re not in a state of shock anymore, you may notice injury symptoms that went undetected before. Thankfully, our car accident chiropractors are experienced in treating these hidden injuries.
Whiplash
The most common type of hidden injury that people get from car accidents is whiplash. It can take some time before symptoms begin to exhibit themselves. Whiplash happens when a person’s neck gets sharply jolted forward and backward. This jerks the neck out of its natural range of motion and puts strain on the muscles and tendons in the neck. Whiplash injuries often occur in rear-end accidents.
It might take whiplash injury victims days or even weeks to realize that they were injured. Some of the most common symptoms of whiplash include pain, inflammation, swelling, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, and bruising. You shouldn’t just hope that your injury will resolve itself on its own. You should consult with our experts at Byers Chiropractic and Massage: Car Accident Urgent Care, who specialize in treating whiplash injuries. More serious cases of whiplash can cause long-lasting symptoms such as reduced range of motion, migraines, severe chronic pain, and stiffness from scar tissue. It’s important to get treatment right away to prevent future complications and prevent long-term pain. People with risk factors such as older age or pre-existing neck pain before an accident are more likely to have worse whiplash symptoms.
Herniated Discs
It’s not uncommon for people involved in car accidents to end up with delayed back pain after the fact. It can be a sign that there is a more serious issue at hand. This is especially true if your back pain doesn’t resolve after a car accident and instead gets worse. This means that there could be a hidden injury causing the pain, such as ligament and muscle injuries, vertebrae injuries, strains, sprains, or even herniated discs. If the spine is out of place, it could press on the nerves in the surrounding tissues and cause numbness or tingling. Back injuries can happen in most types of car accidents, including rear-end and side-impact collisions. They can happen even if the cars involved were going at low speeds.
Discs are spongy and sit in between your spine’s vertebrae. As your spine moves, they absorb shock. When the spine undergoes trauma, such as in a car accident impact, it can cause one of the discs between two vertebrae to rupture or slip. When this happens, there isn’t protection between the vertebrae and they can rub against each other. These types of injuries can be hidden right after an accident, and their symptoms can get worse over time. For expert help in recovering from disc herniation, seek treatment from Byers Chiropractic and Massage: Car Accident Urgent Care’s experienced car accident chiropractors.
Shoulder Pain
There are a variety of conditions that can cause shoulder pain after a car accident. The shoulder that a seatbelt covers can become deeply bruised from the jolting of an auto collision. Depending on how your body reacts to the car accident impact, the shoulder joint and the soft tissues around it can be injured. What might seem like discomfort and bruising from a seatbelt could actually be masking a more serious injury.
A torn rotator cuff is a type of injury that can happen in a car accident. It’s when the muscles and ligaments around the shoulder become strained or torn. It can cause loss of mobility, a decreased range of motion, and pain. If your shoulder is chronically sore, and it hurts to move or lift your arm, make sure to see a medical expert right away. A small fracture of rotator cuff injury might not hurt right away. Sleeping and other regular activities can inflame and exacerbate an injury.
Knee Pain
In the stressful aftermath of a car accident, you might not think about how your knees impacting the dashboard could have injured them. Knees connect to your body’s largest bones, and their health is crucial to being able to comfortably walk. With a knee injury, your daily routine can be seriously affected. There could be something more serious going on, especially if your knee pain and stiffness doesn’t resolve a few weeks after the accident. If your symptoms don’t go away, or your knees swell or become inflamed, you could have something more going on than just a bruise. It’s common for knee injuries such as a meniscus or medial collateral ligament tear to be misinterpreted as just a bruise or bump. A Kent chiropractor can figure out what’s actually going on and help you with these issues.
Psychological Trauma
Not only can car accidents cause physical injury, but they can also result in emotional scarring and trauma. Scary and dangerous situations can lead to depression, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These mental health conditions can make it difficult to move on with regular life after being in an accident.
PTSD is one of most serious mental health disorders that people can develop after being in a car accident. It can lead to the victim having personality changes, shock, nightmares, overwhelming stress and fear, and more. It’s important that you visit with a mental health expert so that they can help you work through what you went through. Almost one in ten people that were in a car accident later end up suffering from PTSD. Counseling is helpful in managing mental health. Car Accident Chiropractors as well as massage therapies have been proven to help relax the body and reduce stress after a person has been through a traumatic experience.
If you were involved in a car accident, it is important to visit a car accident chiropractor in Kent as soon as possible. At Byers Chiropractic and Massage: Car Accident Urgent Care, we can assess you and determine if you have any undetected injuries. You shouldn’t wait until car accident injuries become chronic problems; instead, schedule an appointment with us today. Even if you aren’t sure of how serious your injuries are, it’s important that you get checked out regardless. There are many types of car accident injuries that may go undetected at first.
