Just remember C.R.A.S.H. if you have been in a car crash.

Call 911

Rescue

Assess

Specialist

Home care

Call 911

Rescue:

Safety 1^st.  Like an airplane when the oxygen masks come down, make sur you are safe 1^st.  then Look for others to serve.  Only if you are safe can you help others. When panicked, take an extra measure of caution before you dart into traffic.

Assess:

(Plan ahead, keep a pair of non-latex gloves in your car). If the victim is unconscious, look for any obvious loss of blood 1^st, if so apply pressure with an article of clothing or a travel blanket until emergency medical services (EMS) arrive. If there is no obvious blood loss, look, but do not move the victim.  Access head to toe for any obvious blood loss. Do not try to move people unless they are in a life threating situation.

If they are conscious ask where they hurt and address the most severe injuries 1^st  If they are safe , keep them in the car and let EMS view the scene of the car crash, apply emergency treatment and make the proper reports etc. (the less you disturb the scene of the car crash the better the mechanism of  possible injuries will be understood and where to look for injuries.  This further helps document the case if legal implications become a factor.

Specialist:

If you are severely injured in a car crash, care at a Level I trauma center lowers the risk of death by 25% .

S -CIREN Seattle CIREN University of Washington Harborview Medical Center Eil B l Ch i M k Eileen Bulger, Chris Mack, Rob Kaufman, Giana Davidson  ( National Highway traffic safety administration )

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/seattle-ciren-sep2011.pdf

The Emergency Room or Emergency department’s job is to make sure you don’t have any life threating injuries, stabilize you and then release you. They are experts in helping you stay alive.  once you know you and your family are not in any emergent, life threatening danger, they release you from the hospital but That does not mean you are released form further care. Consider a specialist to examine you and your loved ones. (if you don’t love them, don’t bother, just wait and see…, NOT, just wanted to see if you were still reading…) One of the best places to start care for your injuries is your Whiplash Certified Doctor of Chiropractic (DC).  

Other specialist such as Doctors of Osteopathy (DO) some MDs and some PT’s also use spinal correction as part of their care, but none of them specialize in it like a DC.  Doctors of Chiropractic (DC) are recognized as the experts in spinal correction sometimes called a spinal adjustment.  DC’s are proficient is in their care of the entire musculoskeletal system and are best known for their specialty in back and neck injuries.  DC’s are given licensure as primary care provider in all states of the U.S.A. and as such no referral is required to see a DC.  Whiplash certified Chiropractor (Motor Vehicle occupant injury specialist) means, that beyond the Training as a Chiropractic physician, they have spent extra time in the classroom, studied, tested and certified to understand the dynamics and physics of a car crash.

What types of injuries to look for when a person is hit from the rear, side or front in a car crash? What happens if the seat back breaks? Why is a person injured when the car has very little obvious damage? Could it be that your car has a trailer hitch or trailer receiver anchored to the frame of your car, not allowing engineered crush zones to actually work? How could this effect the injuries in a car crash? What difference does it make if you were hit on black ice or if you were on dry roads & how does this help explain the injuries. What about the person who is limp and relaxed vs. the person who tensed up and braced themselves before impact in a car crash?

Chiropractic is such a good choice and a certified whiplash specialist is even better after being in a car crash.  A certified doctor can document your case and answer all these questions and develop a treatment plan that will have specific treatment designed for your specific injuries from your car crash.  As the pain improves, strengthening will be introduced in a controlled setting and follow up home care instructions will be given for a full chance of recovery.

Your Chiropractic whiplash specialist has developed professional relationships with nearly every specially and will refer out for MRI’s, Orthopedic and surgical consultations when necessary after a car crash.

Do you just want a “quick fix” or a real fix?  A wise person once said that it is better to go through something, we need to go through rather than try to go around it.

Chiropractic is safe, time proven, non-addicting and non-organ damaging treatment that can help you deal with your pain for a real recovery from a car crash.  When you think of your loved ones and the rise of Opioid addiction, wouldn’t you rather have a doctor who specializes in a drug free approach when possible/ One that will focus on the cause of the pain rather than just covering it up? Not that there is not a place for medication, because there is, and Dc’s work with your medical doctor when the pain is just too much.

Chiropractic alleviates pain by removing nerve interference from the spine.  Chiropractic creates optimal healing by addressing proper form and function, accelerating the healing process.  If your body heals in the right place, there is less chance of fibrous adhesions and degeneration in the years to come. We all know or have heard about someone that had an injury and it healed wrong.  Don’t let that happen to you.  Your body was designed to heal, and chiropractic was designed to help your body heal itself.

Home care:

Early care:  As a general rule R.I.C.E. it.

Rest:

Take some down time to heal.  Stressing joints ligaments and muscles too soon slows recovery

Ice:

10min for small body parts, 15 min for medium body parts and 20 min. for large body parts.  Initially ice 3 or more times per day.  Keep 1 hour between ice applications.

Compress:

Use elastic bandage wraps. For extremities always start at the bottom and work up toward the heart. (start just below the injury sight, for example at hand and work up to the arm, or upper arm, or at the foot ad work up the leg and thigh).

Elevate:

Raise the legs arms higher than the heart to assist with circulation.

Follow any other home care recommendations from your provider

1. Todd N. Grant DC in Kaysville, UT, Certified whiplash specialist.

Did you know that chiropractors were once put in jail? 

It’s true. Like most professions that are newly emerging, people were extremely skeptical of chiropractors during the early 1900’s. It was a very recent profession then, only about 20-some years old. As such, people didn’t really understand it, and so there was widespread opposition to it throughout the United States.

Just like how the development of vaccines gave rise to the anti-vax movement from people who objected to such an idea of injecting yourself with a foreign body even though it was proven to help boost immunity; just like people were terrified of anesthesia when it was a new discovery – so much so that it was banned in several Philadelphia hospitals for years after the first successful surgery with it in America – in spite of being an effective pain-reliever; and just like pretty much everything new and unheard of, medical or not, has been vehemently protested throughout history, so too was chiropractic care.

To understand how the 1918 pandemic influenced the history of chiropractic care, let’s look at how chiropractic care originated in the first place. 

When Did Chiropractic Care Originate?

Chiropractic care has technically been around for centuries, with cultures around the world using manipulation practices to treat issues. Ancient Greece has records of such practices, with Hippocrates stating, “Get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases.”

Officially, however, chiropractic care originated back in 1895 with a chiropractor by the name of Daniel David Palmer in Iowa. A Canadian man living in the United States, Palmer felt that the spine was strongly connected with the rest of the body, and that spine misalignment would cause problems in other parts of the body. 

Palmer was originally a practicing magnet therapist before he performed the first recorded chiropractic adjustment. One of the janitors who worked in his building, Harvey Lillard, was partially deaf and had told Palmer how the deafness started years before, when he’d bent over wrong, and his spine “popped”. 

Palmer believed there was a relationship between the two events, and when examining Lillard’s spine, he found that one of the vertebrae was out of place. He performed a spinal manipulation, and Lillard’s hearing came back.

With Palmer’s discovery, it gave rise to the practice of chiropractic care. He began teaching others about his methods in spite of the opposition he was met with by those who couldn’t comprehend it and called it invalid. The same way people did for vaccines, anesthesia, and everything new, they didn’t believe in the validity of chiropractic care in spite of proven results of its effectiveness.

Enter the swine flu pandemic of 1918.

The 1918 Pandemic And Chiropractic

The swine flu pandemic was deadly. It swept across the world, and without a vaccine to protect against it, it is estimated that about one third of the world’s population was infected. With how there was no vaccine and there weren’t any antibiotics to treat the secondary infections associated with the flu, treatments were limited to more basic efforts such as isolation, good personal hygiene, and limitations of gatherings. 

With how there was no known treatment at the time, death rates soared and people were desperate to do whatever they could to protect against it. Some decided to go to chiropractors.

Chiropractors noticed that in general, if your spine is in alignment, you are likely to be healthier, and healthier people stand a better chance against disease than those with health problems. They advertised their services and people did indeed notice the same results people notice from chiropractic care today. 

This is to say that they noticed how they felt healthier and more capable, and with how your central nervous system is in the spine, issues resulting from spinal issues resolved with chiropractic care.

There was backlash to chiropractic care, however, with some getting jailed for practicing medicine without a license and for promoting illegitimate medical practices. In some cases, this was valid, as there were some chiropractors who claimed that they could treat issues that doctors couldn’t and that people should see them for the flu instead of doctors. 

Some chiropractors claimed that they had far lower death rates for those who did come to them for flu symptoms instead of the doctors. This ignored the fact that chiropractic was a very recent practice, so they weren’t receiving anywhere near as many patients as doctors, as well as the fact that the vast majority of people who are sick would see a doctor, not a chiropractor. It also ignored the fact that their death and success rates were largely self-reported, which is an unreliable method of gaining accurate numbers. 

However, chiropractic care did indeed have many benefits, in spite of the pushback trying to invalidate how spinal manipulation could indeed help treat some issues resulting from the spine and other joint problems. It is because of these very real benefits that become more common knowledge due to the fact that rates of chiropractic care increased during the pandemic that chiropractic care became recognized as a legitimate treatment method. 

Since the results of spinal manipulation became more widely known in the 1918 pandemic, chiropractic care became legitimized with a licensing exam in 1923, where 38 out of 41 applicants to become licensed practitioners of chiropractic passed.

Chiropractic Care And You

As you can see, chiropractic care has had an interesting history. It has many benefits and has been recognized as a legitimate treatment method. Chiropractors are no alternate for a medical doctor when it comes to diseases, but it is true that chiropractors can help with an abundance of issues and that sometimes, like Hippocrates said, like Palmer found, some issues are indeed found in the spine.

It doesn’t hurt to see a chiropractor in addition to a medical doctor. You may even end up surprised sometimes. For example, a chiropractor can help a pregnant person have a smooth birth through making sure their pelvis is in alignment. A chiropractor can help with blurred vision, because if you had a car accident, that can throw your neck out of alignment, which can impact your optic nerves. 

Chiropractors can provide an excellent treatment option for pain and injury that can get to the root of the issue rather than just covering it up. And while your central nervous system may not control everything in your body, it does affect everything in your body. If you’ve ever suffered from back pain, you know exactly how that affects how you walk, sit, stand, and sleep.

Are You Considering Chiropractic Care?

Here at Grant Chiropractic, we know the many benefits of chiropractic care. We know how the spine can be at the root of many issues, and we want to help you with them by getting to the root of them. If you’re considering chiropractic care or if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at Grant Chiropractic today!