Have You Been In An Accident? Here’s What You Need To Know.
I’ve been fortunate enough to help thousands of people injured in Texarkana 
car accidents since I started practicing here in 1999.
Read on to find out what I’ve learned about helping people recover after being injured.
I don’t know how many accident victims I’ve seen over the years, but it’s likely 6,000 plus. I am often an expert witness testifying in court or in depositions about the injuries my patients have experienced, how they’re treated, and how they recover.
Seeing so many injured in Texarkana has given me a reputation for being the ‘go to expert‘ for people that were injured in a collision.
Car accident injuries tend to respond remarkably well to the right type of Chiropractic Care.
What’s the best type of care after an accident?
More on that in a moment.
Crashes often cause neck injuries and back injuries that respond best to chiropractic care while others injure their extremities (shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles) and some experience concussions / mild traumatic brain injuries. I’ve seen all these and so many more types of injuries.
Injuries to the ligaments (sprain), joints (often diagnosed as a sprain), muscles (called a strain), and/or discs in the neck after an accident often are called ‘Whiplash Injuries.’
The most common injuries involve damage to soft tissues like ligaments, muscles, tendons, joints, and discs.
These soft tissue injuries don’t heal as well as most bone injuries.
If you break a long bone in half, it’s a major problem for a while but it’s also likely to heal up pretty well.
If you tear a ligament in half. It will not heal and you will have instability of the joint that it supports.
It can be a surgical issue or one that will cause lifelong problems.
Even partial ligamentous tears (often called a sprain) can cause major problems on an ongoing basis.
This is because the soft tissues like ligaments do not heal very well. They heal with scar type tissue similar to if you suffer a significant cut on your skin and it heals up with scar tissue.
That scar is permanent. It is not the same as the original tissue.
Sure it’s uglier but it’s stiffer, weaker, and feels different than the original tissue.
In the case of a ligament, this scar type of fibrous tissue limits some motion and is much more likely to cause future pain in addition to being more susceptible to future injury.
Movement is critical for healing of these types of injuries so that they can heal better during the healing process with better flexibility and strength than would occur otherwise.
This is one of the reasons that Chiropractic Care is critical during this healing process because Chiropractic Care helps ensure the damaged joints continue to move as it heals… preventing some of the damaging effects of excessive scar tissue, shortened and weakened ligaments.
Many people in Texarkana are injured in car accidents every day to varying degrees.
The people may go to the ER or an Urgent Care facility.
The majority will be given some medication to help with the symptoms.
Unfortunately the medication does not help improve the movement of the injured tissues during the critically important early stages of healing.
You may feel better, but it doesn’t really help you heal better.
Worse if you don’t feel the warning signals of pain, you may put too much stress on your injury resulting in greater injury during the healing process.
It’s not the the medication is ‘bad,‘ it might help you be able to sleep or otherwise function.
The challenge is that we want to do more than only help symptoms. We want to improve healing so that you have less problems now and for the rest of your life.
Other people in an accident might just feel some soreness or stiffness, especially over the first week.
This does not mean there was no injury. In fact, a symptom means there was some injury. What was it and how bad is it?
It varies.
We can’t always base the amount of injury on the level of pain.
Different people have different pain tolerances.
Some people have significant injury with seemingly minimal or mild pain.
Other times, the person just hasn’t done anything to put any real stress on the injury… so they don’t know how badly they’re injured.
There are also many other symptoms beyond pain or pain that might not be thought of from the recent trauma.
These can include worsening of pain in an area of previous problem which might be due to a new injury and/or additional injury to that area.
Other symptoms might include light headedness, vertigo, various types of headaches, numbness, tingling, stiffness, or signs of a mild traumatic brain injury – fatigue, irritability, blurred vision, ringing in the ears, and memory problems among other symptoms.
It’s also possible that you have not felt many symptoms yet.
This might be because your body hasn’t responded to the trauma enough / hasn’t yet progressed into the inflammatory stage of healing… Yes, inflammation is a part of healing.
It also might be because you’re taking some over the counter pain reliever / anti-inflammatory like motrin (ibuprofen), alleve, etc.
You may not be feeling the extent of your injuries because you’re taking medications for other unrelated health problems or pain.
I’ve had people that were on steroids or narcotics for another health problem. This meant they did not feel the full effects of the new injury.
Here are a few things that I’ve learned from treating so many Texarkana area people that were involved in an accident.
- If you are in a crash, get checked by an experienced Chiropractor for injuries and treated if necessary. It’s best to get evaluated as soon as possible.
- Don’t assume your pain will go away. Often those mild or moderate pain end up experiencing long term chronic pain. Any injury should be evaluated and properly treated as necessary.
- Medical doctors, urgent cares, and hospitals look for major injuries to bones or organs… like fractures and internal bleeding. When a hospital tells you you will be ok, it doesn’t mean you are uninjured. It means you will live.
- Chiropractors look for soft tissue injuries (as mentioned above) and dysfunction of various joints. These types of injuries can cause major problems down the road. This is why you should be get checked by a good chiropractor in addition to the medical doctor.
Many MDs will not see their existing patients for a car accident… and not all Chiropractors will see automobile injuries either. There are huge variances in experience for evaluating and treating these types of injuries.
If you’ve been injured in a car accident in Texarkana, the best course of action we recommend is to contact us. Come in and get evaluated. You’ll be happy you did!
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