THE CURE FOR NECK AND BACK PAIN AFTER AN AUTO ACCIDENT
In my last newsletter I discussed what causes neck and back pain after an auto accident. It’s very useful that you have that foundation to get the most out of this article. If you would like me to send you the article, click here. Legal Disclaimer [my lawyers told me to add this]: I’m not a doctor, but over 30 years of working with auto accident injury clients has given me some very helpful insights.
When you experience neck and back pain after an auto accident, something went wrong with your spine or connective tissues nearby. Let’s talk first about the connective tissues. In an accident, the connective tissues tear and stretch. Your body responds with various mechanisms to repair this tissue and we experience this repair in our bodies as inflammation and pain. For the most part, the body will be very successful in eventually repairing itself. In the meantime, you can do things to help your body heal faster and temper the inflammation.
- Stop smoking. OK, just add this one to the myriad of other reasons you probably already thought of to convince yourself that not smoking is probably better for you.
- Eat right. Your body’s healing mechanisms all work better when you put nutritious food in it. If it comes from a plant, eat it. If it’s made in a plant, don’t. Protein is important, but not all important. With focus, you can get all the protein you need from plants. But otherwise, if you’re going to eat non-plants for taste or ease of use, consider high quality proteins from mostly fish, maybe chicken and seldom meat.
- Don’t eat bad. Most people when feeling uncomfortable as the body repairs itself will start to eat comfort food. Comfort food lacks the nutrition your body demands for rapid repair, contains ingredients proven to enhance inflammation and being calorie dense, leads to weight gain…all these things inhibit healing.
- Yoga. Eastern medicine has been around much longer than western medicine and we can certainly learn a few things from it. Yoga is an exceptional way to move your body gently while it heals. The increased blood flow that occurs during yoga not only delivers nutrients your body needs for repair but takes away waste products. It will also strengthen the internal structures of the body which will take away strain on the damaged, weaker tissue, giving the damaged tissue the rest it needs to heal. Bohobeautiful.life is a wonderful website that offers both free and paid video content. Start slow, but stay determined to push.
- Meditation. While we are on the topic of eastern medicine, consider meditation. The one thing your body doesn’t need while it heals is stress, which releases the hormone cortisol, flames the fires of inflammation and slows recovery. Life will continuously present you situations to stress about [like OMG, I’m in pain from that darn auto accident, for example]. Meditation is going to teach you, over time, not to stress over the things that normal people would. Learning to do this is a process and the book “Mindfulness in Plain English” by Henepola Gunaratana is by far one of the best tools to learn meditation.
OK, now let’s talk about pain that results from damage directly to your spine. Know that going into the accident, it’s possible your spine may have been messed up in all sorts of ways without your ever being aware. Just because your spine has problems doesn’t mean you will experience symptoms. Some of the underlying spine issues include discs that exist between your vertebrae that will often change shape and may become dehydrated/weaker. These underlying conditions make your spine more susceptible to forces exerted on the spine during a car accident. With so many nerves running around the spine, it doesn’t take much change to your spine’s discs to create nerve pain.
So what to do if an auto accident makes changes to your spine that results in neck and back pain?
- All the above items I mention regarding how to resolve connective tissue problems are just as important to resolving spine issues.
- Chiropractic. A chiropractor plays an important role in the diagnosis and treatment for both connective tissue and spine issues. With x-rays and MRIs, a chiropractor will discover any underlying issues with your spine and then begin work to fix those problems. One spine issue most people have is some amount of misalignment of their vertebrae. Either the vertebrae loses its natural curvature [lordosis, in technical jargon] or may bow to the left of right [scoliosis, in case the word comes up in a future jeopardy game]. This misalignment of the vertebrae puts greater pressure on the discs, even from simple daily activities like walking, let alone from the forces of a car accident. Aligning your vertebrae correctly and returning the spine to its natural curvature can go a long way to relieving the pressure on the discs, which in turn can release the pressure put on the nerves, reducing your pain. Another spine issue is something called ligament laxity. Your vertebrae slide over one another when you bend and turn…ligaments hold one vertebra on top of the other so everything returns to normal when you return to a normal position. But sometimes the ligaments can get overstretched and that creates its own set of problems. Like anything else, finding the best chiropractor for treatment of these spine issue is very important to your health and to a speedy recovery.
- DIY [Do It Yourself]. There are a lot of things you can do for yourself that will help accelerate what the chiropractor is looking to accomplish with getting your spine right. Learn to sleep on your back with a cervical pillow and a pillow underneath your upper thighs. This will flatten your spine against your bed. All night long gravity will try to pull your spine down and misshape it again…your bed’s support of your spine prevents that. Sleeping on your stomach [on your side is the next worse thing] is really bad. Imagine, all night long gravity pulls on your spine in exactly the opposite direction than what nature intends. Also, limit your sitting. Extended sitting, often accompanied with typing on a keyboard, upsets the vertebra alignment you work so hard at your chiropractor to restore. Also, core strength training is extremely important to incorporate into your daily life. This helps take pressure off the discs and holds the whole spinal structure in place…like providing a cast so that a broken bone can heal. Pilates, anyone?
- Spine surgeon. Sometimes, the disc changes shape so significantly that more aggressive tools to fix the problem are necessary. Also, spine issues can degenerate for so long that returning your spine to good health/alignment is possible, but limited. If more aggressive tools are necessary, all the things mentioned above are still very important to incorporate into your life. But a spine surgeon can add several additional solutions. First, they can provide injections that numb the pain nerve in the spine. This is generally a temporary solution, but not necessarily if you continue to do all the other things listed in this article. Second, they can “ablate” [remove] the nerve that is causing pain. This provides a longer term, but not necessarily a permanent solution. Third, they can remove the offending disc through surgery. If after thorough and careful consideration, you choose surgery, note that all the things discussed here from eating right to chiropractic care to sleeping on your back [ALL OF IT] can help with a speedy recovery, keep you from having additional spine issues down the road and offer you the best opportunity for a truly pain free life.
Well, there you have it. If you would like to learn more or have a specific issue to discuss, please feel free to give me a call at 813-877-3253.