Today, I want to talk to you about why you would want to see a physical therapist after a car accident. There are over 6 million passenger car accidents every year in the US, and the majority of these are injury accidents.
Barring the orthopedic-type injuries with fractures where you have to have a bone fixed or surgically fixated, with major car accidents where there are multiple injuries, most often what we see are the soft tissue injuries surrounding the neck and the back or the spine. And they’re related to three main areas:
- muscular strain that goes with a whiplash-type injury
- torn ligaments or sprained ligaments around the spinal structures or other joints in the body
- nerve injury that can occur from a whiplash-type injury from stretching the joints out too far or taking the body to its extremes of motion and actually causing an injury to the nerves
Injuries from Car Accidents Can Vary from Person to Person
Now, you can have all three of these things combined, or any one of them, and they can be of various magnitudes. You can have a very mild strain, which is a pull of the muscle or the tendon. You can have a moderate sprain, which would be a stretching or a partial tearing of the ligaments, not a complete rupture. And then the same thing can occur with the nerve damage.
Now, you can also have inflammation around the nerves, just from the injury itself, from swelling that occurs in the area, irritation of the joints and continual irritation. This can happen particularly if you went into that accident not being in great shape, or you already had some preexisting condition or weakness surrounding the spine or the joints involved.
So, that’s just a general synopsis of the three most common things we see barring, like I said, fracture, or having something surgically fixated.
Physical Therapy Can Help Reduce Inflammation After a Car Accident
Now with physical therapy, it’s important to get started early, even during that inflammation stage, even inside of the first few days, to help decrease the inflammation because we have methods to help decrease the pain and inflammation in the soft tissues, in and around the joints, and to calm that nervous system down, too.
Getting started early to get the inflammation down is important, and so is moving in what I call “lots of little bits.” It’s really important following a motor vehicle accident to do movements in lots of little bits. Your body’s probably not going to be able to tolerate a lot of excessive motion or immediate return to your previous activity. So you have to be coached through what motions to do or not do, how much motion is enough and how much is too much, because you don’t want to perpetually recreate the inflammation in the joints and the soft tissues. A physical therapist will help guide you through the movement and how to control the inflammation.
Progress Takes Time but Pays Off in the End
I keep it really simple and explaining to patients, how to look at their progress overall in a motor vehicle accident, because it can be very frustrating when you start to increase your activity and your pain really rockets up or takes off. You’re trying to control both the amount of motion and the level of pain, because it is often true that when you increase your activity level that your pain might go up a little bit.
But if you’re gradually ratcheting up and down, and your mobility or your function’s increasing, your pain’s decreasing, then you’re doing great. So that’s why you need a physical therapist and, of course, to work with your doctor to guide you through the process so that you don’t create further harm, but you continue making incremental progress in lots of little bits. Increased motion, decrease pain (or increased function and decrease pain) is really the goal to get you back to normal activity.
Start the Healing Process with Physical Therapy Right After a Car Accident
While you’re going through that process, you’re going to go through stages. In the early stages, you’re controlling the pain and inflammation and gradually increasing your motion. Then after the first week or two (and going into about the first six weeks, really), it’s really important to be working with your healthcare professionals and a physical therapist.
That early period is when we can make the biggest gains, not only with inflammation reduction, but with remodeling and reorganizing the healing of those soft tissues and those joints. Doing so will maximize the healing and organize it in a way that as you lay down scar tissue (just like if you have a wound on the skin and you lay down the scab), you’ll actually come out of it stronger than you were before.
We can give you the right motions, give you the right exercises and give you the right education to organize the healing process as you progress so you can get back to normal function and decrease that pain.
Complete Healing Will Take Time, and We’ll Work With You Every Step of the Way
Many times, it’ll take longer than that initial six-week period, which is that real critical period for healing. Beyond that, particularly with muscle and joint injuries, it can take longer than six months to completely heal. We can continue to guide you to a totally recovered body (a reconditioned body or remodeled body as far as the soft tissue healing is concerned) so that you don’t have future problems.
A car accident can certainly knock you out for a period of time, out of mobility or strength or function. You actually lose strength if you don’t address restoring your normal mobility and strengthening the areas that might have been weak before you even got the injury. All of this needs time and attention. It’s also important to create a support system so that you can take strain off your body because, like I said before, if you had preexisting conditions or a previous injury or some previous levels of weakness, you might have to work a little bit harder than somebody that was already fit when they went into the injury or the accident.
Rebound Can Get You Back in Action After a Car Accident
You need a physical therapist to help guide you through that reorganization and remodeling and rebuilding process. That’s what we’re here to do. So if you or someone you know has been in a car accident, get hooked up with a physical therapist quick. You really need a coach, someone to help you progress so that you can get back to function and live the life that you want to live without pain.
Give us a call at 785-271-5533. I’d be happy to help you, do an evaluation, and guide you through that process.
Tags: stiffness, Physical Therapist, pain relief, joint pain, Injury rehab, health and wellness, Rebound Physical Therapy, Rehabilitation
