During a car accident, the force of a collision can lead to major injuries. Whiplash is the most common injury seen and treated in our Boulder office after a car accident. It is an injury that we have helped many patients with and treatment is often paid for by your auto insurance without any out of pocket costs to you.
The spine is made up of a series of vertebrae and discs that are held together by ligaments and ligamentous capsules surrounded by muscles. The ligaments keep the neck and spine stable while the muscles move the spine. Whiplash is an injury where both muscles and ligaments are injured, making Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises essential for proper healing.
The weight or mass of a car traveling at even 10 mph colliding with your car will usually lead to so much force being transferred to you it will cause major damage to the stabilizing muscles and ligaments of the head and neck.
In an attempt to stabilize your head, your neck muscles tighten up quickly. Unfortunately, These small muscles are not designed to handle the force exerted on them during an accident. So they typically are torn slightly in what’s called a muscle strain injury. At the same time, the force is also exerted on the tiny ligaments that hold each vertebrae and disc together. This rapid, excessive force can also lead to tearing of ligaments in what’s called a sprain injury. The muscles and ligaments are left damaged, inflamed, and swollen, necessitating the need for Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises to facilitate recovery.
Often people who have whiplash after a car accident will experience pain, limited range of motion, muscle spasm, and headaches. These are all conditions we have treated effectively many times our Boulder chiropractic office. We can help you get pain relief and get you back to 100% quickly.
Using hands on muscle techniques such as active release technique and graston technique, combined with Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises, we can help to decrease muscle spasm.
Headache and neck pain relief after car accident using ART, Graston, Laser, and chiropractic adjustments.
Step 1: Decrease inflammation, muscle tension, and pain
Class 4 Laser Therapy to decrease pain and inflammation
Laser therapy is a non invasive pain relief machine that shoots light energy into your skin. The light energy helps to increase healing capacity and decrease inflammation in the tissues. It is a very enjoyable feeling of warmth and takes about 5-10 minutes to administer. It is a very effective treatment for whiplash injuries.
Active Release Technique for Headaches after whiplash
Hands-on, focused deep stretching muscle treatment. In ART, specific pressure is applied to the problematic muscles of the neck and shoulders to help improve the motion of your body’s connective tissues (muscles, ligaments, fascia). Active release technique at Boulder Sports Chiropractic helps to decrease muscle tension and restore normal movement or glide between the fascial layers, making it a valuable component of Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises.
Graston Technique for Neck Pain after a car accident
Using a stainless steel tool, we can breakdown muscle knots and restore normal connective tissue integrity. This tool is excellent at crossing over multiple muscles and fascial layers to breakdown tightness. This is a wonderful tool for neck pain relief and decreasing headache tightness in Boulder, Colorado.
Dry Needling for Neck Pain and Headache Relief after a car accident
When we need to release specific trigger points or deeper layers of muscle that we cannot get to with typical hands-on techniques, we can use acupuncture needles in a technique called dry needling. The very small needle feels similar to a mosquito bite, sometimes you feel a little something while other times you feel nothing. The needle creates micro cuts in the muscle to help release the tension. Following the treatment, your immune system senses new trauma in that area and sends new nutrients to that area to help heal the lesion we just created. This helps to promote normal recovery and muscle health and is often included in Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises.
Deep Tissue Massage Therapy
Our Boulder Massage therapist will spend 60 minutes with you to thoroughly work through your tight muscles and get those knots out. After a car accident, we can start with less pressure and then work deeper to tolerance, helping to relieve muscle spasm seen after whiplash from car accidents. Using specific techniques, our massage therapists can comfortably work out some of the connective tissue tightness to free up some of your normal range of motion and decrease inflammation in the area.
Step 2: Gentle and Specific Chiropractic Adjustments
In any whiplash injury, the muscle spasm will pull on the associated joints of the neck. This often leads to a decrease in your mobility as well as causes headaches and neck pain. With gentle and specific chiropractic adjustments, complemented by Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises, we can fix whiplash and relieve neck and shoulder pain from a car accident.
Step 3: Strengthen your neck muscles with Physical Therapy
In any whiplash injury, there is significant injury to the muscles of the neck and shoulders. After decreasing pain and inflammation it is important to restore normal strength to the area through Whiplash Chiropractic Treatment Therapy & Recovery Exercises in order to decrease future flare-ups.
Our Boulder physical therapist can help you identify your weaknesses and eliminate them with specific targeted exercises. She will first spend an hour with you to perform a full exam and then lay out her recommendations for fixing it. Follow up sessions are also 1 hour and are always 1-on-1 with the physical therapist.
We are the only integrated office in Boulder that offers chiropractic, physical therapy, and massage therapy with expertise in treating car accident patients.
If you are looking for a car accident chiropractor in Boulder, schedule an appointment today at Boulder Sports Chiropractic. We have fixed thousands of patients just like you!