Having a job has huge benefits; in fact, it rarely matters whether you’re well-paid or underpaid, what matters is that you have something that you can financially rely upon. Gaining a job during these difficult times is such a great blessing because you don’t only gain experience but you also get to fend for you and your family. Your job, obviously, gives you provision and if you have decent employers, you could even get some other benefits.
What would happen if all this goes to oblivion because you encountered a car crash (or any other sudden, unfortunate event for that matter)? Whiplash, for instance, is one of the scariest injuries that you could ever sustain.
Whiplash is caused by a vehicular crash (when you’re rear-ended) or any abrupt backward motion of your head. What happens is that the muscles and ligaments in your neck become strained because they received a deal of force from the impact from an outside force. There are short-term and long-term effects for this condition. Some of the short-term effects include limited mobility for a short period of time, numbness or some pain around the area, and lightheadedness. The long-term effects can be so debilitating that they can affect a patient’s performance on his or her job, it is very difficult to work with neck and shoulder injuries due to extreme pain, and where there is loss of movement or range of motion.
Whiplash causes angular acceleration of the head. This mechanism of the trauma was previously thought to be a shearing of joints and also causing abrupt acceleration and deceleration of brain tissue. During a low speed whiplash injury (7 mph) the head may be accelerated to 9-18 g’s of force. g force is the force exerted on a body in the opposite direction to which said body is accelerating. If you’re in a car crash and you’re stopped and suddenly the car is hit from the rear the car quickly moves forward underneath you and that acceleration pushes you back into your seat and your head may whip after the impact.
g force gets its name as 1g is the equivalent of the force of gravity on the earths surface. That’s why when individuals experience g forces greater than 1 or 2, they experience a heavy, weighty feeling and do indeed for a brief moment weigh heavier. In car crashes they will just feel pain.
Since the brain is a soft structure, shear strains are created as the outer part of the brain moves at a different pace than the inner part of the brain. This is intensified as the momentum of the head changes rapidly in a sagittal direction during a whiplash trauma.
Just like any illness that can affect your work, whiplash would require that you take a few days off (or even months away from work for more serious cases). This, of course, would mean losing a great deal of income. If worse comes to worst, the patient could even lose his job if this condition persists.
A patient should, therefore, seek a qualified doctor, that can assist with restoring normal function.
The doctor may provide treatments designed to increase function. There a very specific treatments that need to be done and may include exercises.
These can be done to counter the effects of whiplash; in fact, if you do them consistently, there’s a greater chance that you would have a speedier recovery.
If you have any questions or if you would like more information, please contact us at Vivify Chiropractic at vivifymaimi@gmail.com or call 305.661.4775
References
Ommaya AK, Gennarelli TA: Cerebral concussion and traumatic unconsciousness. Brain 97:6330654, 1974.
West DH, Gough JP, Harper TK: Low speed collision testing using human subjects. Accid Reconstr J 5(3):22-26, 1993.
Eriksson L, Bostrom O: Assessing the Relevance of NIC and Its Correlation with Crash-Pulse Parameters: Using the Mathematical BioRID I in Rear-End Impacts. Traffic Injury Prevention 3(2): 175-182, 2002.
http://www.whiplashcure.com/long-term-effects-of-whiplash-and-how-to-avoid-them/
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Neurology/whiplash-after-effects/show/11759
http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-You-Need-a-Whiplash-Lawyer&id=3867822