Whiplash Leads to Accelerated Arthritis of the Spine

Car crashes often stretch, tear, compress, and damage the delicate connective tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, discs, nerves,… ) that holds the spine in place and allow it to function properly.

This damage creates weakness and abnormal movement patterns that can cause the spine to breakdown due to the added stress over time.

The longer the spine is moving incorrectly, the greater it can wear causing ‘wear and tear’ to the spinal joints, discs, muscles, and other soft tissues. We often see degenerative changes with thinning spinal discs and bone spurs.

Arthritis Often Begins With A Whiplash Injury

We often see patients in our Texarkana clinic who have been involved in past car crashes.

Many times, these crashes happened 5, 10, 15 or more years before.

Research has shown that Degenerative Disc Disease, Facet Joint Arthritis, and Bone Spurs (commonly called Spinal Arthritis) is a result of past car accidents and injuries.

Dr. Mason Hohl MD and professor of surgery at UCLA Medical Center reports…

“Follow-up x rays taken 7 years after injury in patients without prior x ray evidence of disc disease indicated that 39% had developed degenerative disc disease at one or more disc levels since injury.”

7 years after the injury the discs and other spinal structures are already breaking down!

This 39% was compared to an expected average incidence of 6% degenerative change in the general population without injury over this period of time.

This is a 650% increased risk of arthritis!

Dr. Hohl further stated,

“It appeared that the injury had started the process of disc degeneration.”

“In another follow-up study of patients with similar injuries but with preexisting degenerative changes in the neck, it was observed that after an average of 7 years 39% had residual symptoms, and x-ray evidence of new degenerative change at another level occurred in 55%.”

This means that if you already some degenerative arthritis and then have another injury, it leads to even more degenerative arthritis in the area.

This really speaks to a couple of very important issues.

Many people have past injuries that did not heal properly and have started causing abnormal wear on the soft tissues.

Taking medications doesn’t change the abnormal movement patterns that are leading to additional stress on the joints causing accelerated wear and arthritis.

It’s important to correct the abnormal movements, the stiffness in the joints, the muscle spasms/tightness, losses of range of motion, and other problems so that the spine (or extremity) doesn’t continue to wear at a faster rate over time.

This will help reduce your pain, stiffness, and tightness now… but even more importantly prevent you from having potentially very serious problems later.

This is what we do at Hagebusch Chiropractic.

We’ve helped thousands of Texarkana residents recover from injuries, improve spinal problems, extremity problems, arthritis, disc problems, and more.

We’re here to help you too, regardless of what you have been told in the past. There is always something that can be done to help improve function of the joints which will improve your symptoms and reduce the wear and tear that is taking place right now.

A balanced, stable spine/extremity that is moving properly will not degenerate as quickly as a spine/extremity that is moving abnormally.

If you live in the Texarkana area and would like to have your spine or extremities evaluated for arthritis, especially if you have a history of whiplash injuries then click here to see Dr. Hagebusch at our Texarkana Clinic.