Hi. Dr. Steve Battaglino here with Battaglino Chiropractic. Today, I want to talk a little bit about whiplash injuries. Whiplash usually occurs as a result of a motor vehicle accident, like a car accident.  If we analyze that, when you’re sitting in a car driving or as a passenger, you’re usually wearing a seat belt. Hopefully, you are. The seat belt is what makes you, what connects you essentially to the car. So, from the seat belt level down, your trunk and so forth, becomes part of the seat and part of the vehicle that you are in.

Let’s say, you’re driving. Let’s say, actually, you are stopped at a stop light.  A car approaches you from behind, and they’re not paying attention. Maybe they are text messaging. I know you don’t. But let’s say they are. They rear-end you, and what happens is the seat of the car, the trunk of your body moves forward, but the head and neck stay stationary in the first phase.   It looks kind of like this. They move forward, your head stays in the same place, and then it stretches forward violently and kind of whips forward and then whips back like this.

There are three different phases to get injured in. It’s kind of a drag, but what happens is it doesn’t really take a lot of velocity change for these injuries to occur. The injuries are to the muscles, the ligaments of the neck, also the joints, and the discs and nerves in the neck.  Studies show that a change in velocity of as little as five miles an hour… So, let’s say, you are in a parking lot, you are going five miles an hour and you accidentally read-end somebody. Just that change right there can be enough to cause these types of injuries. It doesn’t have to be rear-end or front impact. It can be side impact as well. It kind of stretches the neck like so.

These types of injuries do excellent with chiropractic care. The reason is you might have some damaged muscles or ligaments in there in addition to the discs, the bones, and the nerves. What happens is that they get stretched. They might get a little bit torn. And because the areas of the spine are misaligned due to the injury, or even maybe they existed there prior to the injury, it pulls on those tissues that are already torn and injured. It doesn’t feel so good. Plus, it hinders the body’s ability to heal. By restoring proper alignment gently to these areas, it allows the muscles and joints to heal up more quickly, but also more permanently so that you are not dealing with the same injury down the road.