Car Accident Treatments in Tucker
Back, neck, shoulder, and musculoskeletal pain and discomfort can be difficult to treat, and as a result, some patients consider a Tucker chiropractor treatment. This is an excellent way to get an accurate diagnosis and a treatment plan tailored to your needs. Our Optimum Health Rehab experts will examine you, run imaging tests like X-rays or MRIs, diagnose the root cause or causes of your difficulties, and create a customized plan to reduce or even eliminate your pain.
What Happens During a Tucker Chiropractic Treatment?
Our diagnostic process is comprehensive because it’s essential that we find the origins of your pain. Here are the steps we take:
- First, we’ll ask for a thorough medical history, and we may inquire about specific conditions or treatments to better understand your overall health.
- Next, we’ll ask about your pain – how long you’ve had it, if you know what brought it on (whether you had an injury or the pain just appeared out of nowhere), what other treatment options you’ve tried, how well those worked (or didn’t), any other symptoms, etc.
- Depending on your answers, we may run certain tests. These include MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, and nerve conduction testing. All are aimed at giving us a better understanding of the situation.
- Finally, we’ll do a physical exam. We may ask you to lie down on a specialized table that allows for chiropractic treatments, so we can go ahead and make an adjustment when we find an area out of alignment. Chiropractic adjustments are very quick and painless, although you may hear a popping or cracking sound. This is due to gas escaping the joints and is not cause for concern.
How Does Chiropractic Adjustment Work?
There are 33 bones, or vertebrae, stacked up to make the spine. These bones are positioned to move flexibly as needed while you go about your day. They make it possible to do everything from lifting a heavy box to turning your head and waving at a friend.
But because vertebrae are easily moved, they can sometimes slip out of alignment. Some common causes of spinal misalignment include:
- Sleeping position. You may have noticed that your neck or back hurts if you sleep in an uncomfortable position. In some cases, these misalignments eventually work themselves out, but not always.
- Lifting something that’s too heavy. This is a major cause of back pain. If you need to lift something heavy, ask for help if possible, and always lift with your legs to reduce the stress on your spine. This includes working out – if you lift weights with poor form, this can also contribute to a misalignment.
- Falling. When you hit the floor, it’s very easy for vertebrae to get jarred out of alignment. Slip-and-fall accidents are another frequent reason for lingering back pain.
- Stress. Unfortunately, stress is a common contributor to a wide variety of health issues, including a misaligned spine. Stress can be physical, such as the strain of pregnancy and childbirth, but emotional or mental stress can also cause spinal issues. Many people experience tight muscles in the back or neck when they feel stressed, and this can make a misalignment more likely.
- Repetitive motions. People often think of carpal tunnel syndrome when they hear about repetitive motion injuries, but repetitive motions can affect the spine as well as the wrist. If you have a job that requires you to frequently lean in one direction or lift your arms over your head, this can be especially problematic, but other repetitive motions can also affect the spine. With these injuries, you may need to continue coming back for adjustments as the misalignment is likely to happen again if you continue to do the repetitive activity.
- Poor posture. This is frequently a problem for people who sit at a desk all day if the desk setup isn’t ergonomic. In addition to adjusting the spine, we usually make recommendations for healthier sitting arrangements, and we may prescribe exercises to help the patient improve their posture over time.
Car accidents. While seat belts are great for reducing fatalities and serious injuries in auto accidents, they can’t prevent every injury. When one vehicle crashes into another, a large amount of force is transferred, and a person inside the vehicle may be thrown violently against the seat belt. This can easily cause misalignments of the back and neck vertebrae.
Treating Spinal Misalignments
Usually, the first step in treating misalignments is to correct them. One of our experienced chiropractors will apply a sudden, controlled force to push the bone or joint back into alignment. Some patients experience pain relief immediately, while others need a few adjustments to achieve good results (this is common with long-standing injuries that may have caused other difficulties). After adjusting your spine, we will advise you on steps you might take to reduce the odds of a misalignment happening again, such as safer lifting practices or alternatives to repetitive motions.
Over time, misaligned bones can cause strain in other areas of the body, including muscles and ligaments. As a result, many patients benefit from additional therapies to help treat their pain and keep the spine in alignment.
Spinal misalignment is also not the only potential cause of pain, although it is very common. However, some patients may have muscle strain or injuries, myofascial pain syndrome, or nerve issues. A Tucker chiropractor treatment can help you with these challenges as well. Here are some of the other treatments we offer as part of our holistic approach to pain relief:
Physical Rehabilitation
Our therapists use physical therapy to help patients recover from injuries, regain lost function, reduce pain, and address problems with repetitive motion or posture. First, we’ll ask you to do some simple exercises to determine where you are. It’s all right if you can’t do an exercise – this helps us learn about your current abilities and what we need to work on.
Next, we’ll develop a plan to help you get back on track with your wellness goals. Usually, you’ll do several sessions a week in our office with an experienced personal trainer who may help by providing resistance. Then you’ll go home with a list of exercises to do on your own. Skipping these will slow down and possibly even halt your progress, so please make every effort to get them done. If you are unable to do so because of pain or muscle weakness, let your therapist know right away and we’ll find a solution.
Neurology Services
Nerves are sometimes overlooked as a source of pain, but they can contribute heavily to your discomfort after an accident or another injury. A nerve can also become pinched or trapped, adding another source of pain in addition to misalignment or muscle damage. Because nerve damage doesn’t show up on an X-ray, it’s often overlooked by doctors, but the pain is hard to ignore.
Our specialists will run nerve conduction studies to find out if you’re experiencing nerve damage. In some cases, if the nerve is compressed, we may be able to relieve your pain by adjusting the spine to take pressure off the nerve. For example, this may be helpful for patients with sciatica, which is pain caused by pressure on the sciatic nerve. If the nerve has become permanently damaged, we can still treat your pain using electrical stimulation devices such as a TENS unit. These use mild electrical signals to block pain signals from reaching the brain.
Learn More About Tucker Chiropractic Treatment Today
Please contact Optimum Health Rehab online or call (404) 793-1600 to find out more about treatment options or to schedule an evaluation for your pain. Our helpful staff is always available to answer questions or assist you as needed.