Car Accident Chiropractor in Suwanee
A car accident can turn your life upside down and leave you in a lot of physical pain, even if an emergency room doctor has told you that your injuries are not that serious. Of course, it’s good to know that your injuries aren’t life-threatening, but that doesn’t help your pain. Many general practitioners or ER physicians do not have the training or resources to treat pain, especially chronic pain.
Additionally, there may be other roadblocks. Some people recover very differently from the same injuries for various reasons. The first doctor you see about your neck pain may diagnose whiplash and assure you that it “should” go away on its own. This is true for many patients, but for some, the pain remains and becomes a chronic problem that most doctors aren’t well-equipped to treat. You may be prescribed muscle relaxers, which don’t work for everyone, or told to take over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen, which may not offer enough relief. Due to the opioid crisis and increasing concerns about the potential for addiction, most healthcare providers have become more cautious about prescribing opioids, especially for chronic issues. As a result, many people who have suffered car accidents find themselves living with chronic pain with few good treatment options.
How Can a Suwanee Car Accident Chiropractor Help?
Chiropractors are skilled in diagnosing the reasons behind your pain and creating a treatment plan to address them. Unlike a typical family doctor who treats a wide variety of issues or a busy emergency room physician, we focus specifically on pain management and healing injuries of the back, neck, and musculoskeletal system. Our full diagnostic suite includes X-rays, CT scans, and nerve conduction studies, so we can find out why you’re in pain instead of simply guessing or prescribing medication that only sometimes helps people with your symptoms.
Once we’ve reached a diagnosis, we will recommend a treatment plan that may contain one or more of the following services:
Chiropractic Care
A chiropractic adjustment is a process in which a chiropractor uses their hands to adjust misaligned vertebrae in the spine. Because the spine moves and affects the movement of other areas of the body to a large extent, the vertebrae must be very flexible. Unfortunately, this means that it’s easy for a misalignment to occur. Vertebrae can get out of position through many activities, including sitting, doing chores, or lifting objects.
In the case of car accidents, the jarring force of one vehicle hitting another is often a cause of spinal misalignments. Many people are initially diagnosed with soft tissue injuries, such as whiplash, which they may have – it’s very common to experience muscle tears or strain at the same time as spinal misalignment. Both conditions can cause chronic pain after an accident, and both can be treated – if they are properly diagnosed. A chiropractor will identify all possible causes of your pain and treat them.
Massage Therapy
Deep tissue massage is commonly used after car accidents because it can treat deep muscle injuries, increase blood flow to improve the healing process, and help reduce pain and inflammation. In some cases, an accident can cause myofascial pain, in which knots form in the myofascial tissue that skims all organs, muscles, bones, and tissues. As the knots or stiff areas persist, the patient may find it harder to move, or they might feel pain. If this is the case, the massage therapist will carefully massage the myofascial knots until they relax and “unknot,” relieving the patient’s pain.
Physical Rehabilitation
Many patients don’t realize that physical therapy might benefit their injuries. They might think that physical therapy is only used for complex injuries, such as when a person has surgery for a broken leg, then needs to re-learn how to walk again. But physical therapy is useful for many people who suffer from persistent pain after a car accident, even if they didn’t have any broken bones or surgery.
Here are some of the ways a physical therapist may be able to help address your pain:
- Working to enhance chiropractic care or other treatments. Sometimes after an injury, the patient changes their movement or posture because of pain. If this goes on for more than a few days, it can become a habit. It may also worsen your pain by pulling the vertebrae farther out of alignment. Once the chiropractor adjusts the vertebrae, if the patient is still leaning a certain way or favoring one leg, the misalignment can easily recur. Your physical therapist will work with you on posture and daily activities to ensure you’re supporting a healthy spinal alignment.
- Strengthening muscles, tendons, and joints. Being in pain can make it hard to move around, which could lead to weaker muscles and joints. In turn, these weaknesses can worsen misalignments and increase the risk of further injury. A physical therapist will prescribe exercises to strengthen your body, particularly in injured areas or where you’re having pain.
- Stretching. Improving flexibility is also an important goal of physical therapy. The more flexible you are, the more you can move without pain. At the same time, stretching also boosts blood flow and helps you heal faster. Your therapist will do some of these exercises with you, sometimes adding resistance, then advise you on how to practice them at home.
- Increasing range of motion. Pain can make it hard to reach for items or move in ways that allow you to complete tasks easily. This reduced range of motion can get in the way of your usual activities. A physical therapist will help you work on exercises and stretches to restore your previous range of motion (and sometimes make it even better than before).
Reduce pain. Physical therapy has been shown to reduce pain for multiple conditions, including low back pain.
When Should You See a Suwanee Car Accident Chiropractor?
Generally, sooner is better. If you went to the hospital or your regular doctor after the accident, they may have advised you that your symptoms would go away in a few days to a few weeks. When that time frame has passed, and you aren’t feeling any better, we recommend making an appointment with a chiropractor immediately.
However, sometimes people don’t seek treatment right away after a car accident. They may feel that their injuries are minor, that it’s not worth the money, or they may not notice any pain right after the accident. Some injuries don’t hurt very much at first but become painful after the body starts trying to heal the injury, and swelling occurs. The adrenaline rush from a frightening experience like an accident can also blunt feelings of pain, leading a person to think they’re uninjured.
As a result, some people don’t realize they’re hurt until they wake up in pain the next morning or even a few days later. If this happens to you, see a chiropractor immediately. Do not wait a few days to see if the pain goes away on its own. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to get the at-fault party’s insurance company to pay for your care.
Does Insurance Cover Chiropractic Care After an Accident?
In many cases, health insurance will cover at least some of your chiropractic treatments after an accident, often with a copay. How much is paid and what specific services are covered depends on the individual insurance policy. Most policies will cover treatment for back and neck pain, but some offer little to no coverage for other treatments like massage therapy.
However, there may be other ways to seek compensation for your medical bills. As we mentioned earlier, the at-fault driver and their car insurance policy are expected to take responsibility for the injuries and medical bills of people hurt in the crash. Suppose you think that you were at fault. In that case, we strongly recommend checking with a lawyer. Frequently, people take responsibility for accidents that were not their fault or that were at least mostly the other driver’s responsibility. If this is the case for your accident, then you should be able to seek compensation from the other driver’s auto insurance policy. Even if you were at fault, you might be able to seek coverage from your own car insurance, depending on the type of policy you have.
Unfortunately, insurance policies often look for excuses not to pay a claim. They may try to blame you for the accident, even if you know you weren’t at fault. In other situations, they will simply claim that your injuries weren’t that bad or you didn’t need the prescribed treatment. When these challenges happen, it’s helpful to have well-documented records of your injuries and treatment to show that you were injured in the accident. At Optimum Health Rehab, we always carefully document patient injuries and how they relate to the accident to help your legal team seek compensation.
Visit a Suwanee Chiropractor Today
If a car accident has harmed your health or left you in constant pain, please call (678) 546-0550 or contact Optimum Health Rehab in Suwanee online for a diagnostic consultation. We’ll take a medical history, ask about your accident, and run diagnostic tests as needed, then diagnose the sources of your pain. After that, we’ll begin a treatment regimen to help you return to your usual activities.