“How Long Does It Take To Recover After A Car Accident?”

How long does it take to recover from whiplash from a crash?

I’ve helped thousands of people that were injured in an accident in Texarkana, so I’ve seen first hand the pain and suffering that crashes can cause people.

Motor vehicle collisions are common.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that approximately 6 million auto accidents occur each year in the US causing about 2.6 million injuries.

As many as 40% of people injured in automobile accidents suffer with chronic pain for the rest of their life according to the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (2007).

It may be even higher…

The longest running study ever done on whiplash patients evaluated the overall health of whiplash patients about 20 years after their automobile accident that caused injuries. More than 50% were still having with chronic pain. (Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2002).

One of the most common questions people have about their whiplash injury is…

“How long do I need to recover (from whiplash)?”

The answer is, “It depends.“

Great answer, I know. Let me give you a little more info.

Recovery depends on the severity of your injury, your age, your general health, your occupation, and more.

A study of 173 patients with whiplash and 207 individuals with mild injuries. One year after the injury 56% of whiplash patients still had not fully recovered. Whereas about 43% of more mild injury cases didn’t fully recover.

The biggest factor they found among others was post traumatic stress disorder which unfortunately happens in many crash cases due to pain and stress related to the crash.

Other prior studies have also found that PTSD increases the chances that whiplash patients will suffer from chronic symptoms.

Looking at recovery times, one paper found that patients with grade I or II whiplash injury can expect to experience significant relief of their symptoms within a year of their injury.

Other research that I mentioned above has shown that up to 50% of whiplash patients develop chronic problems.

These are pretty shocking stats.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s much more to it as you’ll soon discover.

I’ve found much greater success in treating people with whiplash injuries at my chiropractic clinic.

More on why in a moment, first…

Chronic Whiplash Pain and Problems

Chronic by definition means 3 months or longer.

The reality is that sometimes chronic means lifelong pain.

Why is chronic pain a big deal?

The nervous system, including the pain system, is ‘plastic.’ This doesn’t mean it’s made out of the stuff that’s used to make the Lego’s my daughter likes to play with…

Plastic in this case means adaptable and changing.

It works basically like this.

A nerve is like a muscle. If you want to have big muscles to impress the ladies or whatever, you might go to the gym and lift weights over time spending some extra time in the squat rack doing curls much to the frustration of others waiting to do squats, but I digress.

Anyway, you keep going to the gym repetitively and soon, you’re building some big biceps. Your muscles are bigger and stronger.

The sames thing basically happens if you continually fire a nerve pathway over time. It essentially gets bigger, stronger, and more likely to fire.

If this is a pain pathway, it’s bad news. It makes it much more active and responsive. The longer the nerve pathway fires, the stronger it gets.

This is chronic pain.

This happens to so many people that have whiplash injuries because a large percentage don’t get the right treatment.

Medication doesn’t change this process of plasticity unfortunately, even though it can reduce pain.

I know what you’re thinking…

What the heck does change the chances of developing chronic pain after a crash?

The best way to treat chronic pain is to prevent pain from becoming chronic.

This is why early treatment after an accident is so important, but it has to be the right treatment.

What’s the right treatment?

Bear with me for a moment while I explain some complicated stuff that I’ll try to put into English for you.

We’ve known since ’65, not me I wasn’t quite around yet but people have known, that certain nerve pathways block pain pathways.

This was initially proposed by 2 pain researchers, Melzach and Walls, when they introduced the gate theory of pain which has since proven to be true.

The way it works in our body is that the largest diameter nerves turn off the smallest ones.

The largest ones as it turns out include information from muscles and joints whereas the smallest ones are pain fibers.

Closing The Pain Gate With Movement Based Treatments.

This is great news for me as a chiropractor and explains why I’ve seen so much more success with treating people hurt in an accident.

The treatment that I use includes physical treatment including the chiropractic adjustment, rehab, and other physical types of treatment and therapy that changes the balance between those small painful nerves and the large muscle and joint nerves.

This allows me as a chiropractor to ‘close‘ the pain gate which stops the pain signals by turning them off and reducing your risk of developing chronic pain.

Turning off the actual pain fibers means they aren’t transmitting the signals up to the brain and reduces their activity meaning they’re not getting as big and strong reducing risks of chronic pain.

The exact way varies a little from person to person depending on different factors, but it’s a proven way to reduce pain, reduce risk of chronic pain, and even treat chronic pain.

Getting back around to the question, “How long does it take to recover from whiplash injuries?“

Yes, it varies.

Most of the people that I see are much better within 3 months.

They do have varying degrees of risk of future pain depending on severity of injuries and other factors though.

Some do take longer to reach maximal improvement too though.

Early treatment after a crash is better.

If you’re suffering from whiplash injuries in the Texarkana area, it’s important to be evaluated by a chiropractor who has experience evaluating and treating these injuries.

Very mild cases of whiplash may be resolved quickly. Greater injuries take more time. Getting the right treatment now will help prevent chronic, maybe even lifelong, pain later.

This is so important. Get the right care as soon as possible.

One thing though, I’ve also helped countless numbers of people that are suffering from chronic whiplash because they saw other doctors after their crash.

If that’s what you’re going through, come see us at our Texarkana Clinic. It’s very likely we can help!

References

Asenlöf P, et al. The clinical course over the first year of Whiplash Associated Disorders (WAD): pain-related disability predicts outcome in a mildly affected sample. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2013;14(1):361. doi: 10.1186/1471-2474-14-361.

Hours M, et al. One year after mild injury: comparison of health status and quality of life between patients with whiplash versus other injuries. Journal of Rheumatology 2013.