Chiropractic Care for Whiplash Injuries: What Does the Research Say?

Were you injured in an auto accident and are suffering from whiplash symptoms? Whiplash is an incredibly common car accident injury. However, despite the symptoms being painful and debilitating, you do NOT have suffer them longterm.

Contact a professional whiplash doctor near you for exceptional care.

Chiropractic Whiplash Treatments

The treatment plan your chiropractor constructs will depend on the specifics of your injury. The most common technique used by chiropractors is spinal manipulation, and there are several spinal manipulation techniques they may use.

The Flexion-distraction technique is a hands-on technique that uses very gentle, non-thrusting manipulations to treat herniated discs.

Whiplash often aggravates bulging or herniated discs, and your chiropractor will use a slow pumping action rather than direct force to your spine to reduce inflammation and treat this injury.

Instrument assisted manipulation is also a non-thrusting technique that uses a special handheld instrument.

With the instrument, your chiropractor can apply force without thrusting into the spine.

Instrument assisted manipulation is often used on elderly patients or patients with degenerative joint syndrome.

Specific spinal manipulation allows your chiropractor to identify specific spinal joints that are restricted or have subluxations.

With this technique, your chiropractor restores motion to the joint with a gentle thrusting technique that stretches soft tissue and stimulates the nervous system, restoring normal movement to your spine.

In addition to spinal manipulation, chiropractors can use manual therapies to treat your injured soft tissues.

The Graston Technique is an instrument-assisted technique that consists of gentle repeated strokes using the instrument over your injured area.

Another example of manual therapy is muscle energy therapy.

Therapeutic massage can also be used to ease the tension that has built up in your neck.

And with trigger point therapy, your chiropractor can identify specific tight or painful spots on a muscle by putting direct pressure on these particular points to alleviate muscle tension.

What Does The Research Say?

So, do all of those treatments work, or is it all smoke and mirrors?

Fortunately, there are studies out that prove the significance of chiropractic care.

Four studies prove that chiropractic care provides significant long-term relief for people suffering from whiplash injuries.

These four studies were brought to life by the Foundation of Chiropractic Progress. This non-profit promotes chiropractic care through public awareness.

Nearly 1 out of every 15 adults in the United States are suffering from the long-term effects of a whiplash injury, usually in the form of neck pain or stiffness.

Chiropractic care in the acute (short-term) stage can prevent long-term effects from developing.

Still, two of the four studies saw that chiropractic care can provide up to 90% relief for people suffering from the long-term effects of whiplash even in the chronic stage.

93% of the 28 patients studied retrospectively had a statistically significant improvement after receiving chiropractic care.

The chiropractic care conducted in this study consisted of spinal manipulations, stretching, and cryotherapy.

These studies proved that whiplash is all too common and that chiropractic care is the only proven effective treatment in chronic cases.

The other two studies found that for chronic pain in general when you compare it to traditional medical approaches and acupuncture, chiropractic care has proven to be much more effective.