Whiplash!

I recently read an article on Metallica and chiropractic. You may be surprised, but in high school I was a metal head!

If you have ever been to a heavy metal concert you surely have seen long hair guys on stage banging their head up and down. Metallica even wrote a song about it… Whiplash!

Many of us associate whiplash with car accidents. But you don’t have to be in a car accident (or a member of a heavy metal band) to get whiplash.

Acute, traumatic causes of whiplash are also caused by contact sport injuries, blows to the head from a falling object, falling on the face, or being assaulted. Repetitive stress injuries, or chronic strain involving the neck, (such as using your neck to hold the phone) are common, non-acute causes.

These signs and symptoms may occur immediately or days to weeks after the initial injury.

neck pain and stiffness
neck swelling
tenderness along the back of your neck
muscle spasms (in the side or back of your neck)
difficulty moving your neck around
headache
pain shooting from your neck into either shoulder or arm
shoulder pain and stiffness
dizziness
fatigue
jaw pain (temporomandibular joint symptoms)
arm weakness
visual disturbances
ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
back pain

In the more severe and chronic case of "whiplash associated disorder" symptoms can include:

depression
anger
frustration
anxiety
stress
drug dependency
post-traumatic stress syndrome
sleep disturbance (insomnia)
social isolation

Any sudden stress or repetitive stress to the body needs to be evaluated by a chiropractor. The common mistakes people make when choosing to not see a chiropractor after injury is not feeling immediate pain. Often symptoms following an injury can take days to weeks to appear. Lack of pain does not equal wellness. To determine the health of your spine, have it evaluated by a chiropractor.