How your body heals after a car accident is your choice. After several years, even a minor car accident as slow as 5 m.p.h. may lead to thinning of your discs and painful arthritis in the joints of your neck and back.

It is true that many whiplash injuries sustained from an auto accident can cause damage to muscles, nerves, joints, and even the shock-absorbing disc. After even an impact of only 5-mph studies show that the neck can be suddenly forced into extreme motions that can damage your neck for life. Often these auto injuries may be hidden at first in minor accidents and can affect you later in life. The most common injuries cause symptoms like:

• headaches
• neck stiffness
• sore back muscles
• numbness or shooting pains
• weakness of muscles
• fatigue
• digestive disturbances

But My Doctor Said It Would Go Away?

If the pain goes away and the problem continues to persist the body can heal improperly. In some cases the pain may subside when the acute inflammatory response has ended but often the problem may continue to get worse. This is why it is important to get the neck and back evaluated after an accident by a specialist who is notonly interested on relieving pain but correcting the problem. Chiropractors are the specialists when it comes to dealing with neck and spinal problems.

In many cases the hidden or silent problems associated with an auto accident injury can result in loss of normal curves, spinal bone misalignments, muscle scarring, irritated nerves and accelerated arthritis. The longer a problem is left uncorrected the harder it is to correct it back to normal and keep it stable.

I Take Muscle Relaxers and Pain Killers. Are Their Dangers In Doing This?

Absolutely, auto accidents are a physical problem and not a chemical problem. Since it is a physical problem it would only make sense to treat it physically and not cover it up with chemicals. Some of the research shows that anti-inflammatory medications is helpful to reduce chemical irritants and reduce swelling but long term use can create new problems in the body. Muscle relaxors can not specifically go to only the muscles that are in spasm and they therefore relax other muscles that may already be weak. Pain killers don’t fix the problem and often give a false sense that everything is okay. This may cause further injury because you may not feel yourself doing things that cause further damage. Pain Killers and muscle relaxors also leave you foggy and often tired which may limit your ability to perform normally.

Our advice: Get checked and find our if you have been injured and avoid future degeneration to you spine.