After being involved in a motor vehicle accident, you are unlikely to walk away without a scratch. In fact, you are more likely to end up seriously injured due to the collision. Therefore, following the accident, it becomes essential to seek out medical treatment to ascertain the exact nature of your injuries so you can heal them. However, when the recommendation to seek out the services of a chiropractor comes up, there is some resistance due to negative connotations associated with the practice.
You might be shocked to learn that chiropractic treatment can make all the difference when looking to tend to your injuries from a motor vehicle accident. The benefits of chiropractic treatment have been growing more and more reliable as time goes on to the point that they can no longer be discounted. Some might be hesitant to use chiropractic treatment for a few reasons, but they are likely worth consideration. We hope to provide some insight into the major benefits of chiropractic treatment after a car accident with this article.
Benefit #1: It is Non-Invasive
A lot of injuries require surgical intervention to correct. When it comes to those sustained in a motor vehicle accident, surgical intervention is prescribed by more than a few doctors for issues as simple as neck and back pain. This can include injections, reinforcement, or even replacement, depending on the severity. Aside from the fact that surgical treatments are extremely costly, they are also deeply invasive and require the surgeon to adjust your internal structure to accommodate their solutions.
There are plenty of people who would prefer to avoid this level of treatment for the reasons above and more. This is where chiropractic care can offer a viable alternative. Chiropractic care primarily consists of external treatment avenues that will require no surgical intervention. The treatments allow your provider to tend to the injuries responsible for your pain without having to breach the skin.
For some people, surgical solutions are unsustainable for financial or health reasons. These issues can be skirted by using non-invasive treatment methods made available by chiropractic clinics. Additionally, non-invasive procedures bring with them far fewer risks of side effects or exacerbation to the existing damage.
Benefit #2: It Can Identify Previously Unknown Pain
Many people do not realize that not every injury becomes apparent immediately after the collision. After a traumatic event like a motor vehicle accident, your body is brimming with adrenaline to keep you moving as part of your survival instinct. While adrenaline is an incredibly powerful force to overcome exhaustion or terror, it can also deaden our perception of injuries and pain, so they do not hinder our ability to get to safety. For that reason, we do not always understand how severely we are injured after a motor vehicle accident.
This means that hours or even days can pass before you become fully aware of certain pains. However, despite this potential handicap in determining your pain level, chiropractic care can be an essential tool in neutralizing them before they become more severe. This is because a significant number of chiropractic treatments can prevent the pain from manifesting at all and save you from having to cope.
Benefit #3: It Might Prevent the Need For Pharmaceuticals
One of the most common practices is to provide painkillers or other pharmaceuticals to help with pain management. Most doctors will prescribe the medication to go about your day with minimal pain. However, reliance on medications like this can be unpleasant, to say the least. There are plenty of people who would prefer to find pain management options that are not chemically based. Once again, chiropractic care can offer a solution to this particular problem.
Chiropractic care can often alleviate and manage the pain you are experiencing due to your injuries. Just two years ago, in 2020, a study was conducted that contrasted the number of prescriptions for pain medication to chiropractic treatment. The results found that those patients who sought out chiropractic care were far less likely to fill out prescriptions for painkillers or opioids that doctors would prescribe.
Since chiropractic treatments can manage the pain without chemical assistance, it can be particularly popular with people opposed to chronic medication requirements. While it is not absolute, the use of chiropractic treatment could be just the boost you need to avoid a painkiller prescription.
Benefit #4: It Can Improve Your Posture Post-Injury
Poor posture is a serious issue for most Americans, especially since most of us spend our days hunched over a desk. This can cause a lot of pain and issues in and of itself regardless of motor vehicle collisions. However, this can be exacerbated or caused by injuries sustained in an accident that might cause even more pronounced hunchbacked posture. This level of damage can be devastating if left unchecked and can make it hard for you to correct through traditional methods.
Chiropractic treatment can be used to correct posture conditions, including hyperkyphosis. In 2017, a study found that chiropractic treatments were highly effective on a 27-year-old woman suffering severe hyperkyphosis symptoms. Hyperkyphosis can make it more difficult to function as you age. And when you are injured, the odds of developing posture issues of the same sort can increase and make your physical condition deteriorate. If your poor posture results from your motor vehicle collision, you might find that chiropractic care can help undo the damage.
Benefit #5: It Can Ease the Back Pain Caused by the Accident
You might see this as the bread and butter for chiropractic treatment. It has long been employed to manage and overcome back pain in general. Be it from overextending yourself physically, sleeping in poor conditions, or even from a motor vehicle accident.
Chiropractors offer many specialized treatment avenues that are used to manage pain. While some physicians might hesitate to recommend you to a chiropractor, it is highly recommended by the American College of Physicians. The most prominent treatment options are spinal manipulation, acupuncture, physical therapy, and decompression therapy.
These are highly effective tools employed by chiropractors to help their clients manage their back pain and return them to their standard quality of life. Spinal manipulation is the most commonly employed and is used to adjust the spine. Spinal manipulation allows the chiropractor to apply pressure to realign the spinal column to align with the original positioning of the vertebrae. Considering this is the section of the body that undergoes enough trauma to slip discs or fall out of place, you should expect this particular treatment when using a chiropractic service.
Benefit #6: It Can Reduce Inflammation
Inflammation is one of the more common issues that arise in human anatomy. It can cause issues ranging from general irritation and pain to more severe issues like arthritis. The problem is that inflammation does not show up on the x-rays used by doctors to isolate the issue. Most inflammation stems from micro-tears in the ligaments that do not appear on x-rays as masses or broken bones would. As a result, you might be experiencing pain from the accident despite having completely normal x-ray results. Again, this reinforces the chiropractic early identification benefit we referenced earlier.
Most chiropractic treatments that use the spinal manipulation we mentioned earlier can help with inflammation. Your body is already naturally equipped to combat inflammation since inflammation is your body's defense mechanism. However, when your spine is misaligned or simply out of place in general, it is not possible for the inflammation to die out since your body is tricked into thinking it is still necessary.
Basically, if your spine remains misaligned, it irritates the body's immune response and triggers inflammation. In excess, inflammation can lead to severe medical conditions. Having a chiropractor adjust your spine back into a reasonable position gives your body time to let the inflammation die down and offer some relief from the pain and irritation you would have been experiencing up to that point.
Once inflammation is reduced, your chiropractor can even improve upon other issues, including the range of motion the inflammation might have inhibited. The range of motion gets inhibited because inflammation affects blood flow to the afflicted areas. Even when the inflammation is fully cleared, there remains an issue of rehabilitating the body, restoring the full range of motion.
This is where other treatment avenues like physical therapy and exercises come into play to restore the body's functionality fully.
Benefit #7: It is More Affordable Than Other Methods
While this veers out of medical benefit and into financial benefit, the money saved using a chiropractor cannot be overlooked. Most other methods for dealing with injuries from a motor vehicle accident, like surgery and regular prescriptions for pain medication, tend to bring with them a large price tag. Depending on the type of work you do or where you are financially at the time of the accident, this can be a debilitating level of expense. However, since they do not have to be the only option, it can be skirted to some extent.
Back in 2016, a study was conducted comparing the expenditure of records of Medicare patients who suffered from chronic back pain, a common symptom following a motor vehicle collision. By the end of the study, the researchers had determined that the patients seeking chiropractic care had lower overall costs when compared to those going through physicians and conventional treatments. The study also found that chiropractic care required less time than standard treatment options.
It can be inferred from this study that going through a chiropractor can save you a fair amount of time and money on the road to recovery. Of course, not everyone has the financial means to seek out expensive treatment avenues or drugs. Still, affordable treatment can be just the oasis you need to recover without breaking the bank. However, it should be noted that the exact timeframe is dependent on the individual circumstances per patient. So, you might find yourself taking longer to recover if you have more severe injuries.
The Next Level
Motor vehicle accidents are nothing to scoff at. Depending on the severity of the collision, you might find yourself coping with injuries that go far beyond anything you have previously dealt with in your life. You will likely have to seek emergency care immediately following the accident to identify what injuries you have. After that, it becomes a matter of seeking out rehabilitative treatment. Many physicians might try to direct you straight to surgical intervention or injections of some sort to resolve the pain and manage the symptoms. However, given that these options are not always ideal for many patients, it would not be unreasonable to seek an alternative.
However, chiropractic care can offer several benefits that conventional treatment cannot. Chiropractors offer rehabilitative and pain management options that are minimally invasive and have proven results over years of practice. When it comes down to it, the only thing you have to lose with trying out chiropractic care are results. But even if you are ready to give chiropractic care a chance, you might need some help finding a place that can offer the services you need.
We at Next Level Health would like to offer a possible solution with our chiropractic and joint care programs. Straight from the minds of physicians dedicated to chiropractic health like Dr. Emmett Blahnik, we offer a series of programs for rehabilitation and pain management for chronic pain. This includes pain suffered from a motor vehicle collision or another traumatic injury. So, if you want to try out a chiropractic treatment to aid in your recovery, give us a call and take your health to the Next Level.
Do you or a loved one have any questions or concerns regarding chiropractic treatment for an injury from a car accident? If so, please do not hesitate to reach out and contact us at any time. Injuries from car accidents are a serious matter and need to be taken care of sooner rather than later. We would be more than happy to assist you or your loved ones however we possibly can.