People tend to think that whiplash only happens in severe, traumatic car accidents, but even a low-speed fender bender is enough to cause whiplash.
At Life Essentials Chiropractic, we help people with car accident recovery every single day.
Chiropractic specializes in identifying and correcting the root cause of a health issue. We don’t simply mask pain with drugs or injections; we take a comprehensive, holistic approach to make sure you fully recover quickly.
Many people often go wrong when they are referred to a doctor by an attorney who is more interested in large bills than correcting the root cause of their car accident injuries. Even though there’s a place for pain medications if you’re in severe pain, we don’t want just to cover up and treat the pain. It’s critical to correct the root cause of your pain.
We constantly hear stories from patients who had an accident years ago and tried injections, stretching, physical therapy, and medication. At the time, they got relief. But the root cause was never fully corrected or rehabilitated so the problem always came back. Now they’re dealing with degeneration that is triggering chronic numbness and tingling, headaches, brain fog, and other symptoms of unresolved whiplash injuries. This all could have been avoided if they would have went through a thorough corrective rehabilitative process at the time of the injury.
For long-term recovery without the risk of relapse or more serious complications later in life, corrective chiropractic care is the best approach. Our holistic approach addresses the structural issues that are at the root of your symptoms, correcting spinal misalignments and loss of joint motion, and assessing the health of your muscles, ligaments, tendons, discs, and nerves.
What is Whiplash?
Whiplash is the abrupt whipping motion of your head forward and backward. Car accidents are the most common cause, but they can occur from a sports injury, slip and fall, or any sort of accident that jerks the neck quickly and unexpectedly.
As your head gets violently tossed around, you’re stretching the tissues in your neck beyond their physiological limits, creating tears in the muscles, tendons, and even discs. The soft tissue that holds your skeletal system together can be overstretched, torn, sprain, or strained. Your discs can swell, tear, bulge, or herniate.
People often don’t feel the full severity of the injury until several days later after the adrenaline of the accident has worn off. Common whiplash symptoms include:
- Neck pain
- Stiffness
- Mid back pain
- Headaches and migraines
- Limited mobility
- Fatigue
- Brain Fog
- Dizziness
- Anxiety
- Memory problems
- Sensation that your head is too heavy to support
- Numbness and tingling in the arms and hands
- Shoulder pain
$49 New Patient Special
Includes Comprehensive Consultation, Complete Physical Examination, All Necessary Digital X-rays, Report of Findings.
How Our Care Plan Works
1. Identify The Root Cause
You will never be able to achieve wellness by chasing your symptoms; you’ll only get stuck on a merry-go-round of medication offering temporary relief. True wellness comes by addressing and correcting the root cause of your symptoms. That work takes advanced diagnostic tools and doctors committed to understanding how you’re feeling and how it’s affecting your life. This crucial first step is the only way to forge a solid foundation for effective care.
2. Discover The Path To Your Goals
Once we’ve identified the root cause of your issues, together, we’ll develop a unique approach tailored to your needs and aspirations. Our various treatment modalities allow us to get the best results regardless of where a patient has been and where they’re going. Whether hitting a new PR, staying competitive through the back nine, or keeping up with your grandkids, each phase of your care is purpose-driven, taking you closer to the person you were meant to be.
3. Live Life Without Limits
With a solid foundation and a clear roadmap, you can achieve and sustain a vibrant, pain-free life, fully equipped to reach your God-given potential. We walk with you on this journey and provide you with the tools and knowledge to ward off future illness and injury and ensure continual improvements to your health and outlook. When you shed the anxiety and despair that comes with a life dictated by health limitations, you can achieve things you never thought possible.
How We Provide Lasting Whiplash Relief in Missouri City, TX
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
Our doctors are experts in whiplash recovery. We’ll discuss the accident and injuries to determine which tissues were involved and assess your symptoms. We want to know how these issues are affecting your life and set goals for what you want to accomplish when you get back to full health.
Our thorough examination includes:
- Orthopedic and Neurological Tests
- Posture and Range of Motion Exams
- Digital X-ray Imaging (when necessary)
A picture is worth a thousand words. Taking a peek inside via X-ray helps us be precise and tailor care to your unique situation.
Specific Chiropractic Care in Missouri City, TX
Whiplash symptoms arise because of damage to the nervous system. After an injury, irritation or compression of your nerves disrupts the vital energy flow between your brain and body causing pain and dysfunction.
That’s why corrective chiropractic care is by far the best approach to whiplash recovery. We don’t mask the symptoms with stretching, injections, or pills. Chiropractic is the only profession that takes into account every one of the tissues involved, evaluating the body as a whole rather than just pieces of the puzzle, to identify and correct the root cause of your discomfort.
While chiropractic adjustments work to:
- Align the spine
- Improve range of motion
- Decompress the nerve system function
- Reduce nerve irritation
- Restore normal neurological communication
…corrective exercises and therapies stabilize your musculoskeletal system, ensuring those incredible changes take hold.
A healthy nervous system will accelerate your body’s natural healing abilities.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
Your bones, muscles, discs, and ligaments cannot be separated. They all work as one system. Therapeutic exercise is essential to maximizing the speed of your recovery and ensuring that those corrections and changes endure. We need to retrain the tissues involved in your injury and help them stabilize your body again so that you can return to a normal neutral posture with healthy spinal function.
Common Symptoms of Whiplash in Missouri City, TX
Headaches
Spinal cord injuries and spinal misalignments, common during whiplash injuries, decrease blood supply to the brain by 35%. This decrease in circulation can create headaches.
Muscle strains can also create tension that triggers headaches. Following a whiplash injury, micro tears in the muscles cause spasms and knots, leading to tension or suboccipital headaches.
Shoulder Pain
Many people experience shoulder pain after a car accident. This happens either from cervical spine nerve compression, as those nerves run through the arms and out to the hands, or from muscle strain. The shoulder is a large muscle group that connects to the neck and thoracic spine. The human head weighs 12 to 14 pounds. As it gets whipped back and forth during an accident, the muscles of the shoulder and upper back brace against that violent movement.
Even the shoulder joints themselves can be involved, especially when a seat belt restrains the body during the accient. For the healing of that connective tissue, a specific evaluation and chiropractic adjustments for those extremities, along with therapeutic exercises, may be required.
Back Pain
Back pain is an obvious result of a car accident. Lumbar or lower back pain is also common if a disc becomes swollen, bulging, herniating, or torn from a collision.
Chiropractic care is excellent for addressing all the structures of the spine – from the cervical curve through the thoracic and lumbar spines, and into the pelvis. The nerve roots in the pelvis and lower back control the function of your lower extremities, and nerve irritation can result in numbness, tingling, and cramping in the legs and feet.
Check Out Our Location Near You
5425 Hwy 6 Suite A-300, Missouri City, TX 77459
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a chiropractor in Missouri City, TX, help with whiplash?
Yes, corrective chiropractors specialize in identifying and relieving musculoskeletal issues. Their holistic, non-invasive, natural approach makes them the #1 choice for accelerating healing.
How do you strengthen your neck after whiplash?
After a thorough examination, we can create a customized therapeutic exercise program to strengthen and stabilize your neck based on your unique situation.
How should you sleep with whiplash?
Ensure a neutral spine and pay close attention to symmetry.
On your back, make sure your ears are close to your shoulders and your neck is properly supported. If you must sleep on your side, make sure your head does not sag too far into the mattress or push up over the opposite shoulder.
Avoid sleeping on your stomach as much as possible. This position distorts your neck for long periods, altering neurological and muscular function.
Should I go to a doctor or chiropractor after a car accident?
Corrective care chiropractors are the most qualified and experienced doctors who specialize in treating spinal injuries related to a car accident.
Can you get permanent damage from whiplash?
Permanent damage can occur from whiplash when not treated comprehensively. It’s critical not just to treat symptoms with medication or stretching but also to have a thorough evaluation and a comprehensive treatment approach to fully rehabilitate spinal alignment, mobility, and soft tissue health.
When should I be worried about whiplash?
If your whiplash symptoms don’t improve within two weeks, there may be an underlying injury that requires corrective chiropractic care to restore alignment, joint mobility, and soft tissue rehabilitation. When injuries are left untreated, they can create bigger and more severe problems later on down the road.
What are the long-term effects of whiplash?
Chronic whiplash injuries that go uncorrected can lead to arthritis and degeneration in the joints and discs. It’s common to develop health issues in areas where those nerves innervate, like brain fog, memory problems, pain, numbness or tingling in the extremities, headaches,
sleep problems, etc..
Can whiplash symptoms get worse over time?
Yes, this is especially true if you only mask your symptoms and don’t address the underlying issue. If your spine is not corrected properly, it usually creates more serious problems over time.
What are the symptoms of severe whiplash?
- Stiffness
- Neck pain
- Reduced range of motion
- Headaches and migraines
- Brain fog
- Fatigue
- Memory issues
- Blurred vision
- Difficulty concentrating
- Pain, numbness, and tingling in the arms, shoulders, and hands
- Dizziness
- Sleep disturbances
$49 New Patient Special
Includes Comprehensive Consultation, Complete Physical Examination, All Necessary Digital X-rays, Report of Findings.
