Car Accident Injuries Cause Pain and Weaken the Neck
Car Accident Injuries Cause Pain and Weaken the Neck
Rear-end collisions, even at low speeds, can cause significant damage. Through the use of live subjects in crash tests involving rear-end collisions, scientists discovered the damaging effect of increased head accelerations during these auto accidents. In fact, sometimes reaching up to 9G's (1G=force of gravity) What this implies is a person’s head, which on average weighs approximately 10 pounds, all of a sudden weighs 90 pounds. In its most basic version, whiplash is explained as: a person’s body is pushed one way, while the person’s head is pushed the opposite way. This causes multiple collisions within the body. I.E. The brain impacting the inside surface of the skull, then impacting the air bag etc. It comes as no surprise that much of the injury occurs in the ligaments that join the vertebrae that lie in-between the torso and the head, that keep your head and neck stabilized.
This issue was viewed specifically by Ivancic and colleagues at Yale University. They discovered that while performing an example collision, the pressure in the lower part of the neck was 269.5 Newtons, or nearly 60 pounds of pressure, in approximately 1/20 of a second. This is the fact: when the strains are concentrated in such a small area, the human spine is not built to handle it. Research has shown that these forces are much more powerful than those that would normally act on the ligaments holding the spine together.
Proper treatment if received early enough, can help ward off long lasting spinal pain and dysfunction. If you or anyone you know has had the misfortune of being involved in an accident, please call our office for an immediate appointment. We've helped people in Tulsa for year and it's continues to be an honor.
Whiplash Accidents and Neck Injuries Treated, Tulsa, Oklahoma
