Did you know that the average number of car accidents in the United States is 6 million every year? With so many people getting injured in car accidents, you too might be part of this statistic. Unfortunately, most injuries cause chronic pain and mobility loss.
Keep reading to learn whether you need physical therapy or chiropractor care after your accident.
Physical Therapy
This form of treatment might help you get on the road to recovery after your car accident without having to use any drugs. A physical therapist will create a treatment plan to treat your specific injuries.
Their goal is to help you improve your ability to move while they reduce the pain you are having at the same time. By the end of your treatment, they want to make sure that your flexibility and strength are both restored.
A physical therapist is an expert in working with the musculoskeletal system. After a car accident, a physical therapist will work with you in order to strengthen any damaged muscles or tissues that you might have.
Something else that they will help you with is relearning everyday activities if your injuries are very serious. One of the techniques that they might use is heat therapy or hydrotherapy. Another technique a physical therapist might use is manual therapy to help promote joint mobility and tissue healing.
Some of the benefits of physical therapy include:
1. Prevent Injuries
A physical therapist will assess which areas of the body are more vulnerable and then identify the risk of injury to those areas. The plans that the therapist comes up with for the patient will help strengthen and prevent future injuries from happening.
The exercise that is used will target specific muscle groups and ligaments to work together to strengthen the area and prevent further injury.
For athletes, a physical therapist is able to determine the risks of injury and early signs of injury. With that determination, they are able to create a prevention plan or a recovery plan to make sure the athlete is safe going forward.
2. Surgery
Sometimes surgery is inevitable but physical therapy might be able to eliminate the need for surgery or it can delay it. Surgery is typically the last resort used by a doctor. They prescribe physical therapy to help heal before jumping into surgery right away.
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractor care is a natural method of treating pain that does not involve either surgery or drugs. A car accident chiropractor will help treat your body naturally reducing inflammation and will help speed up your healing process.
Even for those that are experiencing debilitating pain after their car accident, a chiropractor can help realign the spine and help give pain relief without using addictive medications.
Chiropractors use spinal adjustments, rehabilitative exercises, and electric muscle stimulation as part of their drug-free techniques.
There are a few benefits that patients will experience with chiropractor treatments:
1. Inflammation
With spinal adjustments, a chiropractor is able to bring the spine back into alignment. This will help produce natural anti-inflammatory properties that will help assist a patient with discomfort from these tears.
Keep in mind that a standard x-ray is not able to see micro-tears within the muscles.
2. Medication
When you receive treatment with a chiropractor you do not need prescription medication as much. Unfortunately, prescription medication can become very addictive for some people. Taking painkillers short term after an accident can easily lead to continued addiction or it can make the person feel dependent on the medicine.
An adjustment with the chiropractor can ensure that the injury is being healed from the source. This means that the pain will not be masked by the effects of the medication instead the pain relief will be thanks to adjusting the spine.
3. Reduce Pain
Spinal adjustments with a chiropractor will reduce the pain in all the affected areas and it will also give relief to the rest of the body as well. Plenty of patients say that they feel a significant amount of relief right after an adjustment.
Sometimes this relief can come from releasing pain-reducing hormones.
4. Scar Tissue
Sometimes muscles get scarred after an accident and it will cause the person to have soreness and stiffness. These scarred tissue areas can be targeted with a chiropractor to help break down the buildup a lot quicker than letting the body heal by itself.
Less scar tissue means that you will feel much better faster.
5. Range of Motion
When you have a car accident and you suffer from neck or back injuries it can result in restricted mobility. This means that it is more difficult to turn your neck or move around because your muscles are inflamed. With an adjustment you will be able to mobilize the spine, in turn, restoring the proper range of motion and improving the healing process.
6. Long Term
When you receive chiropractic care soon after a car accident you will help prevent minor injuries from becoming worse. It will also prevent those smaller injuries from becoming more serious or more chronic later on in life.
Feeling Like a Physical therapy VS Chiropractor Care Pro?
Now that you understand the main differences between physical therapy and chiropractor care you can make an informed decision on which form of treatment is right for you. You want to make your own evaluation of what you feel is best for you and talk to your doctor to see if they agree.
Did our blog post help you out today? Please keep browsing the rest of this section for some more helpful reads.
