Dealing With Whiplash
Understanding Whiplash
The seven bones that make up the structure of your neck are stacked on top of each other, with a shock-absorbing disc between each level. Your neck is relatively flexible, so it relies on your muscles and ligaments for support. Whiplash describes a situation where these tissues are stretched too hard or too far, much like a rope that frays when it's stretched beyond its capacity. If you were recently in a car accident in Evanston and your neck hasn't felt right since, you're not overreacting, and you don't have to figure this out on your own.
Car Accidents & Whiplash
Auto accidents are by far the leading cause of whiplash.
Up to 83% of people involved in car accidents sustain some form of whiplash injury. Several variables determine the seriousness of your injuries. In a rear-end crash, patients who are hit from behind normally sustain the most serious injuries.
Being struck by a larger or heavier vehicle can also greatly increase your risk. Your vehicle does not need to be visibly damaged for you to sustain an injury. In fact, the amount of damage to your vehicle has a very limited relationship to your injuries. Most modern cars have shock-absorbing bumpers that minimize damage to the vehicle but do not provide much protection to the occupants in low-speed collisions. Rear-end impacts of less than 5 mph routinely give rise to significant symptoms, which is why so many people search for a car accident chiropractor even after what looked like a minor fender bender.
Other factors that increase your chance of a whiplash injury include improperly positioned head restraints, wet or icy roads, having your head rotated or extended at the time of impact, and being unaware of the impending collision. Muscle tissue becomes less elastic as we age, increasing injury risk, and people with pre-existing arthritis are more likely to develop complaints. On average, females are more likely than males to be injured.
What are Whiplash Symptoms
Whiplash symptoms may appear right away or take time to appear. You may notice some soreness in the front of your neck at first, but this should subside quickly. Ongoing whiplash injury symptoms often include a dull neck pain that sharpens when you move your head, most commonly focused in the back of the neck but able to spread to the shoulders or between the shoulder blades. It's common for delayed neck pain after a car accident to show up days later, so don't assume you're in the clear just because you felt fine at the scene.
Tension headaches regularly accompany neck injuries, and dizziness or TMJ problems are also possible. Rest may relieve your symptoms for a while but often leads to stiffness. Be sure to seek medical attention right away if you notice any signs of a more serious injury, including a severe or unusual headache, loss of consciousness, confusion or "fogginess," difficulty concentrating, dizziness, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, a change in vision, nausea, vomiting, numbness or tingling in your arms or face, weakness or clumsiness in your hands, decreased bowel or bladder control, or fever.
Sprains, Strains & Long-Term Risk
Sprain and strain injuries replace your normal, highly elastic tissue with less elastic scar tissue. This process can lead to ongoing pain and even arthritis. Up to a year after a car accident, more than half of those injured will still experience neck pain. That's why getting evaluated early matters, and why waiting it out rarely pays off. If you were riding with others, it's worth having them checked too.
How We Treat Whiplash at Evolution Spine and Sports Therapy
Dr. Travis Ahrens, DC, has built Evolution Spine and Sports Therapy around one core belief: in-office treatment gets you feeling better, but it's what you do at home that actually resolves the problem. For whiplash and car accident neck pain, that means hands-on chiropractic care to calm the injured tissue and restore motion, paired with specific home-care habits so the improvement sticks instead of fading a few days after your appointment.
You'll need to be careful about your activities and limit strenuous movement for a while, depending on the severity of your injury, but severely restricting your daily activities can actually delay recovery. The goal is to help you act as usual again, not to sideline you indefinitely. We'll also walk you through simple, practical adjustments, like avoiding heavy headgear, skipping the cervical collar unless a medical professional directs otherwise, using ice for 10 to 15 minutes each hour for the first couple of days, and switching to heat afterward.
Serving patients throughout Evanston, IL, and the surrounding area from our office at 922 Noyes St. Whether you're dealing with whiplash from a recent accident or lingering neck pain that never fully resolved, we'll build a plan around your specific injury and your life, not a generic protocol.
Frequently Asked Questions
As soon as possible, even if you feel fine at first. Whiplash symptoms and delayed neck pain after a car accident can take a day or more to show up, and early evaluation gives you the best shot at avoiding long-term stiffness or scar tissue buildup.
Yes. It's actually one of the more common patterns with whiplash. Adrenaline and inflammation can mask pain in the first 24 to 48 hours, which is why delayed neck pain after a car accident catches so many people off guard.
It depends on the injury, but leaving it alone isn't a great bet. Patients who combine hands-on treatment with the right home habits recover faster and more completely than those who just wait it out. That's the whole philosophy behind how we approach whiplash treatment at Evolution Spine and Sports Therapy.
Generally, no. Cervical collars rarely help and are typically not recommended unless a medical professional directs you otherwise, since prolonged immobilization can lead to more stiffness, not less.
