The Benefits of Chiropractic Care After an Auto Accident.
Clear Lake Chiropractor Comments: Unfortunately 20 – 50 million people a year are injured or disabled in auto accidents. The majority of these injuries are what is called “soft tissue” injuries. Soft tissue injuries are injuries that occur to muscles, tendons & ligaments, not hard tissues like bones.
After an accident, one of two things will happen. The accident is either severe enough that you are taken by an ambulance to the hospital to treat your injuries or you will go home to see if your discomfort gets better. If you go to the hospital, when you are released from the hospital you will be told to follow up with a doctor. If you go home to wait and see if the discomfort will go away, give it a couple days for the pain to go away. If the pain is still persisting after 2-3 days, then you should have a doctor look at your spine to see what has occurred.
The type of doctor you see will determine what type of care you receive and the long term results you will get. If you go to your average medical doctor, he will treat you with medications and if that doesn’t work, then refer you out for physical therapy. If you go to a spine doctor, either an orthopedic or neurosurgeon, then they will typically order an MRI to see if you need surgery or epidural spinal injections (ESI’s). The best doctor to see is an experienced chiropractor. Chiropractors see musculoskeletal injuries every day. Because they see a variety of spinal and extremity (knee, shoulder, wrist, elbow and ankle) complaints on a regular basis, they are able to see injuries that are not obvious to doctors that don’t regularly treat them. A quality doctor of chiropractic has a variety of techniques and therapies to help reduce the inflammation quickly and minimize the formation of scar tissue. By minimizing your need for drugs, you can understand how you are truly healing and prevent the chance of injuring yourself by possibly being over medicated. Medications can also have adverse side effects that lead to other problems. A good chiropractor will also give you home based exercises and stretches to help increase your range of motion (ROM). These exercises and stretches will help you quickly return to how you were before the accident.
If your doctor of chiropractic does not see an improvement in your complaints in 2 -4 weeks, he or she can order an MRI or make the appropriate referral to another doctor to help co-manage your condition.
Dr. Ward Beecher practices at Beecher Chiropractic Clinic at 1001 Pineloch, Ste 700 Houston, TX 77062. You can schedule an appointment at BeecherChiropractic.com or by calling (281) 286-1300. If you have any questions regarding this blog, please comment below!
