Medical Providers: Colorado Injury Update – Why See a Chiropractor After a Car Accident
Medical Providers: Colorado Injury Update – Why See a Chiropractor After a Car Accident
After a car collision, your physical recovery is just as, if not more, crucial than managing insurance claims and vehicle repairs. Your injuries and pain are serious issues that should be treated as such. Symptoms of whiplash, such as neck pain, muscle spasms, stiffness, and others typically develop within the first day or so after a car wreck. However, some symptoms and injuries don’t show up until several days or weeks later. Those who have been in a car wreck should see a chiropractor if they experience pain in their neck, back, or shoulders after a recent car crash.
Here’s why seeing a chiropractor is beneficial after an accident.
Proper Treatment Can Speed Up Recovery
At best, car wrecks are major inconveniences. No one wants to lay around waiting to recover from their injury to return to work and get back to everyday life. Soreness, pain, and the inability to perform daily tasks can weigh heavy on crash victims. With pain meds or other traditional treatment methods, it could be weeks or months until they are back on their feet. With chiropractic care, those injured in a car crash often recover faster. Chiropractic care can include:
- Spinal/physical adjustments
- Massage therapy
- Acupuncture
- Physical Therapy
- Physiotherapy
- Ultrasound therapy
- Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS)
Chiropractors develop personalized treatment plans for each patient based on their injuries, medical history, and personal lifestyle. They may use different diagnostic equipment or tests to better pinpoint the plan of care that is most appropriate. The purpose of chiropractic treatment after a motor vehicle wreck is to return you to your pre-injury condition. Increasing mobility, eliminating muscle spasms, decreasing your pain, and treating all other symptoms at the source is the best way to accomplish this.
Injured individuals with mild to moderate whiplash typically get better within two or three weeks. However, more severe injuries might have lengthy effects, leaving victims to struggle for months or even years. It’s hard to tell when an acute injury will result in chronic pain. Seeing a chiropractor just in case is in your best interest.
Avoiding Pain Medication
While pain medications have their place and serve a critical purpose, sometimes patients prefer to avoid them as much as possible. In some people, the side effects of pain medications, such as feeling groggy, memory problems, and constipation, can be worse than the pain itself. Receiving chiropractic care can be an alternative to pain medication or a way to decrease pain medication use.
Chiropractors holistically concentrate on enhancing the body’s biomechanics. They don’t use invasive techniques such as surgery or the injection of steroids. They also forgo the analgesic drugs prescribed to car crash victims by other practitioners in the medical community.
Using pain meds to mask symptoms of an underlying condition doesn’t do the patient any good in the long run. Chiropractors know that to alleviate the pain, they must find and fix the root cause of it. In doing so, they assess the patient holistically and offer treatment modalities that align the body to return it to proper working order.
Chiropractic Care as a Second Opinion
Seeking medical care after a car wreck at a hospital or from your primary care physician is an excellent way to safeguard your insurance rights. However, it doesn’t mean that your injuries won’t get overlooked. If the hospital or your physician doesn’t find that you have any severe or life-threatening injuries but are still in pain, visiting a chiropractor is the next step. Hospitals are great at finding and diagnosing severe or life-threatening injuries or other vehicle crash-related injuries such as fractures, broken bones, and concussions. Even if the hospital or your doctor gives you a clean bill of health, there’s no harm in seeking a second opinion if you are still experiencing pain.
Car crash victims should undergo examination by a doctor familiar with these types of injuries who regularly treat them in their practice. Car crash injuries can hide, not revealing pain or mobility issues until months or even years after the initial injury. Chiropractors are qualified to find these hidden injuries. They are skilled at performing neurological and orthopedic diagnostic tests to evaluate soft tissue damage, structural damage, muscle strength, range of motion, joint and nerve function– all of which can reveal symptoms of an injury that other medical professionals might overlook.
Seek Legal and Medical Advice After a Car Collision
If you’re a medical provider and have questions about referring your patients to a chiropractic physician, we can help. If you are a patient with questions about seeing a chiropractor after a car crash injury, we can help with that as well. Dr. Patrick Collins Esq. has a unique perspective as he was a practicing chiropractor before becoming a personal injury attorney. He has seen first-hand how chiropractic care can increase the experience and well-being of those injured in motor vehicle wrecks. Give our law firm a call today to learn more about your post-injury legal and medical options: 719-622-1352.