What is Whiplash ?

Whiplash, also called cervical (neck) acceleration/deceleration or CAD, is when your heasd and or neck moves either front to back, back to front or side to side when your body is impacted by another force. Typically we think of whiplash occurring in a automobile accident but whiplash can also occur in sports like hockey, football and even amusement park rides can cause whiplash. For our conversation, we'll be talking about automobile accidents. For this example, let's say you were the driver of your car at a stoplight when you are hit from behind. You have your seatbelt on, the person that struck you was texting while driving and moving at relatively low vehicle speed. Let's say, 8 miles per hour. You didn't strike any objects in front of your car even after your foot lifted of the brake upon impact. You get out of the car to observe the damage. You only notice some scratches on the bumper and a small dent. You feel fine so you don't need an ambulance and since you didn't call the police, you exchanged drivers licenses' and insurance information with the driver of the other car. You seem o.k. the rest of the day, you complete your day and go to sleep but when you wake up in the morning-it's a different situation. Your muscles ache, you can hardly turn your head and when you do, you experience sever pain. What happened ?

Well first off I want to let you know that this is a common scenario when someone has a whiplash injury. Typically you are feeling fine but as the day goes on, your muscles stiffen up and as a result you have difficulty moving your neck. When you do move, you stretch the muscle and it causes pain. The pain can come from several sources. The muscles, which can tear at the point that they insert at the bone, the nerves, which get pinched when your vertebrae are misaligned because of the impact and the bones which have pain sensitive nerve fibers where one bone rests on top of another.

Let it be known that the amount of damage that occurs to your vehicle does not equal the amount of damage to your body. Vehicles are made to crush under impact and when energy(impact) is applied to the car and there is very little to no damage to the car, the energy is absorbed by the occupants of the rear-ended vehicle. To add on the to the severity of the condition, if someone has arthritis in their neck or a degenerated disc, the accident can bring out a dormant condition that may not have given the person any symptoms throughout their life.

If you or someone you know has been in an accident and is experiencing, headaches, neck pain, jaw pain, back pain, low back pain, disc herniations, disc bulges, disc degeneration, spinal stenosis give us a call at Auto Accident Pain Relief Center of Illinois 24/7 at 800-862-5914.

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