Short North Accident Injury Care

Archive for the ‘Pain Neck’ Category

Which is worse – neck pain or back pain?

I hear this question often in my chiropractic office.  Of course the answer is easy – if you have back pain, back pain is definitely worse than neck pain.  If you have neck pain, neck pain is definitely worse than back pain.

Another common question that I hear regarding low back pain is why sitting makes it hurt more than standing.

This is a good question, which can be answered through physics.  I remember seeing a diagram in one of my office ergonomic books that exposed the different stress levels on the spinal disks with various body positions.

The diagram had drawings of a person standing, lying down, sitting and then sitting while hunched forward with very poor posture.  The disk pressure differences with these different postures was given as follows:

1)    Standing upright 100%
2)    Lying down          24%
3)    Sitting upright     140%
4)    Sitting hunched   190%

The explanation of the much higher disk pressures while sitting is explained by examining the structural changes that occur when we change from a standing to a seated position.

Our spines are supposed to have curves when viewed from the side.  The neck should have a nice sweeping forward curve, the mid-back should carry a backward curve and the low back should have a sweeping forward curve.  When these curves are present, the weight of your body is carried evenly across several different structures of the spine.  These curves help provide stability for your spine.

Once we assume a seated position, the natural forward curve in our low backs reverses which increases the pressure on the disks and either increases back pain or causes back pain.  If we stay in that seated position but flex our bodies forward at the waist (think bad posture – slumping over your keyboard or desk) the pressure in the disks elevates causing more damage and more pain.

Limiting the time that you sit will help your back pain in most instances.  This is advice that I hand out to my San Diego chiropractic patients everyday of the week.  I hope that it helps you as well.

Injuries Treated, Short North Columbus, Ohio

Call 614 299 9797 to make an appointment.

A Chiropractor treats injuries from a car accident.

When were you in a car accident?

Did a chiropractor assess you? If not, you should have this done. It’s always still possible to pursue this treatment.

Quite a few persons have been treated by my Columbus Chiropractic Office for back pain, headaches, and neck pain caused by car accidents. It may surprise you that we not only treat patients with recent injuries from auto accidents, but also those that had accidents that were dismissed as mild and not previously treated.

It has always seemed strange to me that people usually don’t look after themselves as well as they look after their cars. I’m not sure why so many people hold onto these types of thoughts. Slight neck pain, headaches and lower back pain are all too often minimized, overlooked, or brushed off as not something to worry about after an auto collision injury. This shouldn’t be the case. Can you imagine if other health concerns were treated so recklessly?

The injury triggers in whiplash related accidents are complicated. Discs can become herniated, fractures of the spine can occur, muscles stretch and tear and ligaments can often partially tear or even burst. There are numerous various symptoms that can cause pain in the neck or back, ranging in severity from an irritation that is small to a disability that is severe as a result of these injuries. Short-term back and neck pain is very distressing, but chronic back and neck problems are even more difficult to cope with.

While whiplash is a complex injury, the spinal injuries that result often show a common pattern. Muscles and ligaments at the injury location start feeling irritated. Inflammation results from the irritation. The inflammatory process is the cause of the majority of symptoms at the onset, and it also causes the development of scar tissue that can cause these symptoms to become permanent or chronic.

One quarter of auto accident victims develop chronic problems from their injuries. I frequently witness this statistic in reality in my Columbus, Ohio chiropractic office.

Car accidents often result in neck and back pain along with headaches, areas that chiropractors excel in caring for. To make sure that you are not part of the one-fourth of those people who do not recover completely from a car crash injury, see a chiropractor as soon as possible for examination and treatment.

Whiplash Accidents Injuries Treated, Short North Columbus, Ohio
Call 614 299 9797 to make an appointment.

Posture and Back Pain and Neck Pain Injuries Treated, Short North Columbus, Ohio Call 614 299 9797 to make an appointment.

Back pain and neck pain can strike anyone at any time. In my chiropractic clinic in Columbus, Ohio, we see patients that have injured their backs or necks from lifting boxes, operating heavy machinery, sports injuries, auto accidents and falls.

Patients or new chiropractic patients would be surprised to find that the most
common type of injury that we see in our office is not from lifting 90 pound sacks of concrete but from postural stress.

Postural stress is the “silent killer” when it comes to our spinal health. Postural stress occurs during both seated and standing positions. Postural stress occurs any time that your spine looses its’ natural curves and / or moves forward beyond its neutral balance point.

An example of a posturally stressful position for your neck would be when you are sitting at the computer leaning your neck and head forward while either keyboarding or reading the screen. Assuming a posture in which your head and neck are extended out in front of your body reverses the normal curve of your neck and shifts your head forward of its balance point.

When we assume postures that cause stress on our spines, the stability that is inherent in our structure when postural boundaries are respected is lost. Postural stress exposes our alignments and muscles to prolonged periods of stretching which results in fatigue, irritation, inflammation, back pain and neck pain.

Treating postural stresses resulting neck pain and back pain requires a multifaceted approach. Chiropractic care will relieve the pain and stiffness. This may take several treatments based on the length of time that you have been in pain and the severity of your symptoms. Concurrent to chiropractic care, you must do everything possible to remove the causes of the postural stress. A thorough workstation analysis can reveal hidden sources of postural stress. Applying ice packs to the specific areas of neck pain and back pain in twenty minute sessions is also helpful.

Posture and Back Pain and Neck Pain Accidents Injuries Treated, Short North Columbus, Ohio Call

614 299 9797

Whiplash Accidents Injuries Treated, Short North Columbus, Ohio Call 614 299 9797 to make an appointment.
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Mark van Hemert, DC, DACS

Short North, Columbus Chiropractor explains:
IME was originally an acronym for independent medical examination, but the IME doctor is now chosen by and paid by the insurance industry. The acronym now stands for insurance medical examination.

The most recent development in the insurance medical examination has been the multidisciplinary examination, where a chiropractor and a medical doctor, both with higher credentials than the average clinician, examine the patient simultaneously.

This creates an appearance of a high level of specialization and expertise. The opinion in a majority of these reviews is that care beyond two months is not needed. The rational is that the laying down of scar tissue is completed by the eighth week and therefore further treatment in not medically necessary or therapeutic.

They state that the patient is at maximum improvement and no further treatment is necessary. This rational does not consider the remodeling and strengthening of scar tissue, nor the need to restore maximum joint function.

However, without an attending physician who is knowledgeable about the guidelines and who has accumulated objective data of improvement, the professional response to this rational will be based solely on opinion and not fact.

Mercy specifically does not give a limit for reasonable care, but observations, assessments and the definitions of care based on scientific evidence.

It states that these guidelines are not designed to be a cookbook. The listed time for acute stage of care ranges from 8-16 weeks, depending on which of three cited references you go by.

In reviewing those references, I believe that the eight weeks refer to the acute healing cycle of the injury, and the 16 weeks to the acute physiology or rehabilitative healing time.

The healing and rehabilitative acute stages are followed by the subacute stage, before the unresponsive chronic phase of function and pain begin. Rebuttals of IME opinions using the Mercy guidelines increase your credibility when justifying your clinical rational to claims adjudicators.

The insurance industry recognizes the Mercy document as the authority in the chiropractic profession. The parameter of clinical practice that Mercy most fully addresses is the trauma induced patient.

Perhaps if “Acute Traumatic Cases” had been added to the title of the guidelines the criticism of the document would have been muted. Mercy creates a solid, well thought out guideline for the traumatic personal injury and workers’ compensation case.

Mercy very effectively deals with narrow minded, nonflexible professional rational and makes the third-party payers conform to a set of standards which is fair to the patient and respectful of.

Whiplash Accidents Injuries Treated, Short North Columbus, Ohio Call 614 299 9797 to make an appointment.