Every year, hundreds of thousands of citizens in our country, and around the world, suffer from symptoms caused by a traumatic vehicle accident.
If you experience any of multiple signs described below or you think that your body is just not feeling shortly following a car accident, you should seek medical assistance. The following is a list (based on frequency of occurrence) of symptoms to be aware of following a car crash:
- You experience an inability to stay focused or concentrate. If your mind wonders off of a subject or project you’re working on, and this happens more easily than it did before the collision, you should consult a physician right away.
- Headaches seem to come more quickly and frequently. If you suffer from headaches, more severe or more frequently than you had before the accident, this might be a sign you need medical attention.
- Clouded thinking: Your thinking patterns seem less coherent and more distorted; this can include trouble with remembering certain facts or information.
- You suffer from blurry vision. This one is self-explanatory. Especially if you’re driving and the road signs become hazy, you need to take act immediately and call your physician.
- If you experience nausea, especially more than normal and outside of a ‘flu-like’ situation, this may be the result of trauma to your body stemming from the accident.
- Some people will start to feel dizzy following a collision. If so, this is another symptom that demands to be checked.
- You may begin to experience a lack of energy. This happens in many cases because a key organ, or other internal mechanism, was impacted from the crash.
- Finally, people who have survived a traumatic collision can develop abnormal sleep patterns. Crash victims should remain vigilant in tracking their sleep routines, recording in some way what takes place as they rest at night.
Many times, the effects of the trauma are not felt until the next day or in some cases, several days later. The reason for this is believed to be because of the increased adrenaline running through your veins that make many people not feel the pain or discomfort of an injury until the adrenaline dissipates from the blood. Especially in instances where the crash happened at lower speeds, those involved in an accident may think that they did not suffer from any adverse effects. This is why your car insurance company provides a 14-day window to seek medical treatment following an accident, to provide coverage for these delayed symptoms. Even after the 14-day window, if you feel that something is not right, don’t hesitate to get medical attention.
About 75 percent of the symptoms just mentioned (symptoms that occur right away) can also manifest days after the crash.
- Clouded thinking is one symptom that can occur later, and accident victims should remain aware of their thought patterns, especially as the next days progress after the accident.
- The ability to concentrate should also be monitored, in the days and weeks ahead.
- Headaches are one of the symptoms that have a reputation of afflicting the victim later, down the road. Headaches and migraines can be a symptom of trauma that occurred to the neck and brain.
- Blurry vision can begin to occur, as well, days or weeks after an accident. This one tends to come on the victim quite slowly and may even come and go. In any case, if the blurred sight is abnormal, a physician needs to be made aware of it.
- If your memory begins to fail, and details are hard to ‘call up,’ or this happens to you more than usual, this is yet another sign that you should be checked out.
- Should you notice major behavioral changes, including but not limited to an increased temper, shorter patience, fewer inhibitions, or more reckless behavior, then the trauma from the accident may have caused more that just physical injury.
- Finally, in terms of physical signs to monitor, nausea, dizziness or a lack of energy can each occur well after an accident too. At times, doctors have recorded that these symptoms usually appear within a week or two following the accident. However, it isn’t completely rare for victims to begin suffering from these three symptoms months, and even years after the crash.
Any discussion of harmful outcomes from a collision wouldn’t be complete without mentioning whiplash. This is an injury to the muscles in your neck. And those muscles are impacted in a bad way when the collision causes your head to be thrown backward in a sudden way, then immediately thrust forward.
Soft tissue injuries generally cause pain, limit the range of your mobility, and create swelling. Also, these symptoms may not show up immediately either. Many accidents occur with a high amount of force. Yet even at a lower rate of force, it could potentially take a few days or even weeks to experience symptoms from any form of injury that occurred from the crash. Physicians of multiple specialties agree on this much: victims from an accident need to closely monitor any symptoms that may appear and report those symptoms as soon as possible to their doctor. This also pertains to the delayed symptoms.
How Can an Upper Cervical Chiropractor Help With My Car Accident Symptoms?
Trauma to the body, neck, and head can cause misalignments, or subluxations, in the spine; subluxations cause interference with the body’s Central Nervous System. The Central Nervous System controls the body and the mind; it interprets our environment and commands the body to act accordingly (e.g. when it is hot, we sweat as a means to cool off). The Central Nervous System also commands the bodies pain receptors, immune system, and bodily functions. Interference of the Central Nervous System can cause a number of issues throughout the body, including headaches, blurry vision, neck and back pain, dizziness, and even emotional issues.
Upper Cervical Care focuses on removing the subluxations of the spine, primarily those located in the top vertebrae – the Atlas and the Axis, and the resulting issues within the Central Nervous System that the subluxations caused. Although only the top vertebrae may be corrected, when the top of the neck is in its proper position, the rest of the spine will follow suit. When the subluxations are removed, the spine is properly aligned and the Central Nervous System is able to properly function at its prime and the effects of the delayed symptoms from your car accident are likely to be diminished or dissipate all together.
