Even minor car accidents can be upsetting events and with the weight, speed, and momentum of vehicles colliding, your body faces tremendous forces that provoke responses, and sometimes pain isn’t one of the first.
When you don’t suffer an immediate traumatic injury as part of a car crash, you’ll still likely have a stress response. At Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation we know that you may have late-emerging pain after your accident, and it’s caused in part by the way your body reacts to stress.
Stress responses happen naturally throughout your life. A sudden fright or other threat, real or imagined, starts a release of hormones that helps to keep you safe in the moments after the event.
Physical changes follow this hormone release. Your heart rate and blood pressure increase, providing nutrients and oxygen to your muscles. Respiration may also peak.
Your awareness becomes acute, your pupils dilate, and your body tenses. When your sympathetic nervous system takes over, your normal response to pain changes. Though you may suffer an injury that would normally hurt, you’re not aware of it while in the middle of a stress response.
Because of this dulling of pain perception, injuries seem to develop after the fact. Late-emerging medical issues that often follow car crashes include:
You may also develop mental health conditions as a result of your accident. The most common are anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
There’s no definite answer. Each person’s stress response has its own unique characteristics. The doctors at Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation specialize in car accident injuries, so often it’s a good idea to check in with us as soon as possible, even before pain emerges.
After assessing your condition, we’ll likely recommend a treatment or a combination of therapies best suited to the injuries you’ve suffered. Chiropractic treatments can correct spinal imbalances in time to eliminate or reduce the effects of the accident.
We may also recommend other therapies, such as cold laser, electrical stimulation, spinal decompression, or specific soft tissue approaches including the Graston Technique.
With six offices in the Philadelphia area, you’ll find Active Care Chiropractic & Rehabilitation conveniently located near you. Call or click to request an appointment with our specialists today.
