Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. Today, I want to talk about a term that gets used real frequently with accidents called whiplash. Whiplash is an injury to the neck and areas below the neck due to some traumatic impacts, like a car accident. It doesn’t have to be a car, it can be a boating accident, jet ski, anywhere where the head is whipping back and forth. It comes from the analogy of a bull whip. When you crack the whip, at the very end, the whip is going so fast that it actually makes that cracking sound because it’s going through the air so fast, it breaks the sound barrier.

When you’re in a motor vehicle, for example. Let’s say you’re driving a car, you’re stabilized by the seatbelt from here down. Everything from here down becomes part of the seat more or less, but your head is moving freely still and that’s why the injury occurs. There’s two basic ways. One is, let’s say, you rear end a car that’s stopped, the first stage is where your head goes forward and then it goes back, both really quickly and violently, and then back to neutral. The more common way and more severe type is where you get rear ended by somebody from behind you. You’re in a neutral position and the head accelerates really fast back like this and then comes forward like this and then back to neutral. This creates a lot of damage to the disks and joints of the spine, but also to the ligaments and muscles, and especially… Well, I’m assuming that you’re wearing a seatbelt. If you’re not wearing a seatbelt, there’s going to be even more damage because you can hit the steering wheel, windshield, and dashboard.

Even when you’re wearing a seatbelt, when you go forward, it’s really common that people will hit the steering wheel, either with their head or with their arms, or if their airbag opens up… That airbag, we think about it being a cushiony bag, but it opens at a rate of 200 miles an hour. So, it’s just like opened instantly and impacting with that can sometimes cause a lot of damage.

Chiropractic is an essential and an excellent way to heal properly from these injuries because the body really wants to splint and kind of stabilize these injuries and heal them as quickly as possible. So, it will put down scar tissue to kind of firm things up, even if they’re out of place from the injury. What chiropractic does is it realigns these areas, the bones, joints, disks, muscles, and ligaments properly, so that it can heal in the best way. This is the best for having a comfortable outcome and having the best range of motion, but also for preventing further injury down the road and premature arthritis and things like this.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic and this has been your health minute.