Whiplash

Whiplash is a very common neck injury. It can happen during a car accident, while playing contact sports or from a head impact. Our chiropractors in Charlotte can diagnose and treat your whiplash.

Whiplash Symptoms

Whiplash causes severe headaches and migraines, dizziness, neck pain and stiffness, upper back pain and loss of range of motion in the neck. Symptoms typically occur 24 to 48 hours after the accident, but some individuals do not experience symptoms until months after their accident, which can make the injury harder to diagnose.

Importance of Seeking Treatment

If you have recently been hit in the head with an object, experienced a hard impact playing contact sports or been in a car accident, you should immediately schedule an appointment with our chiropractor to check for whiplash and sprains and strains of your neck. Whiplash and sprains and strains of the neck do not heal on their own. Instead, the symptoms and pain tend to get worse, and it can even leave you with permanent loss of range of motion in your neck. This happens because during a severe sprain of the neck, the cervical vertebrae are straightened.

This completely eliminates the curvature of the neck and applies excess pressure to the front of the neck. This excess pressure can displace the discs and cause bulges and herniations, which further increase your pain and limit movement. If the whiplash remains untreated for years, eventually bone spurs develop. These spurs cause even more pain, and they severely and permanently impact the range of motion in your neck.

Chiropractic Treatments for Whiplash

Chiropractic adjustments, corrective exercises, massage therapy and nutritional advice can help correct whiplash damage and reduce your pain and headaches. Our first goal in our treatment programs involves reducing your pain, and we start that process with chiropractic adjustments. Chiropractic adjustments help put your cervical vertebrae back into their proper alignment. This is the key to permanently correcting the whiplash injury and reducing your pain and the frequency of your headaches.

Massage therapy relaxes the muscles, ligaments and tendons, reduces inflammation and pain and improves blood flow and oxygenation to the muscles of your upper back and neck. This greatly reduces recovery time and pain and helps prevent future injuries to the same areas. Wellness care and lifestyle advice are utilized to help you improve your overall health. When you get the right amount of exercise combined with the best possible nutrition, your body is better able to heal itself and maintain its energy levels, and future injuries are also reduced.

When all of these treatments are utilized to treat your severe neck sprain, healing times are greatly reduced, range of motion is increased and headaches and migraines are decreased. We even offer ongoing care to help you reduce the chance of future neck and back injuries. To get started treating your neck pain, headaches and upper back pain, call our Charlotte office.