When you’re injured in a car or truck crash, you want an effective treatment approach that gets to the source of your injuries, alleviates your pain, and facilitates your healing. Medical protocols certainly have their place, but they tend to treat injuries in isolation. Chiropractic care recognizes that the parts of the body are interconnected and, therefore, takes a whole-body approach to your diagnosis and healing. Since the source of your pain is not always obvious, chiropractic’s more inclusive methodology can treat hidden injuries or conditions that are not initially obvious. This is especially important after a car wreck because you may not experience symptoms of your injuries until hours, days, or even weeks later. After a traumatic event, adrenaline can kick in, masking your pain. You can walk away from a crash seemingly unscathed, only to have real problems later.
Chiropractic care treats your pain and facilitates your healing naturally. It doesn’t rely on the use of pharmaceuticals, which only numb or mask pain without getting to the root cause. Multiple studies, including ones conducted by the University of Spain and Memorial Chiropractic College and those reported by NIH National Library of Medicine, have shown that chiropractic adjustments help lessen pain, not just in the area of injury, but throughout the body.
One of the causes of pain after a wreck is inflammation. When an injury occurs, the body responds by producing cytokine, which can lead to redness, swelling, pain, and stiffness. And it’s not just serious injuries that cause this reaction. Even micro-tears in ligaments, tendons, and muscles from the force of impact on your body can lead to inflammation and its resultant problems. Left untreated, inflammation can actually harm tissue.
According to these studies, chiropractic adjustments appear to thwart the body’s production of cytokine, thus relieving the symptoms and damage of inflammation. In addition, chiropractic adjustments can facilitate the release of pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory hormones including oxytocin, neurotensin, cortisol, and beta-endorphin.
In its attempt to heal itself, the body also responds to ligament, tendon, and muscle injuries by forming scar tissue from collagen. Scar tissue can cause long-term pain and stiffness. Chiropractic protocols can help to soften and/or reduce scar tissue, and because chiropractic care is non-invasive, there’s no added risk of scarring. Chiropractic adjustments can align the spine and joints without surgical intervention and can reduce the need for surgery in the future. Scaring from surgery is common, and surgery can lengthen your recovery time and put you at risk of additional complications.
Accident and Injury Chiropractic is specifically equipped to help you recover after a car wreck using a variety of approaches including adjustments, therapeutic machines, exercises, and stretches to help align the neck and spine, restore joint flexibility and range of motion, mitigate inflammation, soften and/or reduce scar tissue, release pain-relieving hormones, and improve overall blood flow. Because rehab is a natural part of chiropractic care, you can re-align and rehab all in the same place. Come to one of our 11 Accident and Injury Chiropractic clinics, and we’ll have you feeling better and on the road to recovery in no time.
