After treating people for car accidents for over 25 years, I have witnessed a common trend among those injured. They wait before they get treated. Why? I am going to give you the three reasons that people wait before getting treated and why this is bad advice from wherever you got this from.
1) Waiting decreases inflammatory markers.
Let's say you have been injured an an auto accident and you feel fine at first. Days later you start to experience soreness, pain and now numbness and tingling into your arm. You decide to wait to see if the symptoms will go away. Maybe you went to your doctor who gave you pain medication or told you to take over the counter medications for pain. Both are bad advice. In this patient's case, the numbness in the arm after a car accident is an indication for an MRI. MRI's can pick up disc bulges, disc herniations in the spine and also inflammation. If you wait for the inflammation to subside, or you wait for the numbness and tingling to decrease you are giving the insurance company reasons to deny responsibility for compensating you. They can say that since there is no inflammation in the spine, or there is no disc bulge, or there are degenerative changes in the spine(it takes six months for arthritis to start showing up on imaging) that the accident is not the cause of your symptoms. They will say that this is preexisting and they will deny compensating the plaintiff.
2) Waiting causes the body to heal itself.
The body has the innate ability to heal itself from injuries. For example, let's say you fell and broke your arm. You can take medication to decrease the pain and swelling however if you don't cast the arm properly and then rehabilitate the arm after the cast is removed, you will not have the same functionality as you did prior to the fall. Your body will heal, but it will heal wrong! The same occurs when you have a car accident. The muscles in your body are stretched to a limit. After they reach that limit, they are stretched beyond capacity. It's o.k. to take some pain medication but realize that the natural healing process involves scar tissue formation. When scar tissue forms, you will have shortened muscles, and with shortened muscles you will have decreased range of motion of the joints. This will lead to premature arthritis. Like I said above, it takes six months before a normal joint will display arthritic changes on imaging. Take medication if you like to relieve the pain, but remember, pain medication only masks the symptom and you need chiropractic care first, then rehabilitation.
3) Insurance companies don't want to pay for your injuries
Let's say you were rear-ended by someone at a stop light. The person who struck you has an insurance company that doesn't want to pay for your injuries because you waited too long to get treated. They will deny and try to say that your not injured that bad since you didn't seek out treatment quickly. They will say there are no objective tests to prove that you had an injury (see #1 above). Insurance companies are businesses too. They need to bring in more money than they send out. This is why you need things: an attorney, and a trauma trained chiropractor. The attorney will be an advocate for your case. They will take the facts and argue to the insurance company that you were injured in an accident
and that the care you receive is necessary. The trauma trained chiropractor is needed to correlate causality, to bodily injury, and bodily injury to functional loss. You can see my qualifications here:
Once you have your team set, they will prove to the insurance company that you have a legitimate health issue and your care is justified.
If you have been injured in an auto accident, don't wait ! We have you covered ! If you are in the Chicagoland area including, Elmhurst, Villa Park, Lombard, Bensenville, Addison, Bellwood, Berkeley, Westchester, Oak Brook, Northlake, Melrose Park, Stone Park or Hillside and are experiencing neck pain, whiplash, numbness and tingling in the arms or legs, headaches, jaw pain, sciatica, low back pain, spinal stenosis, shoulder pain, call Auto Accident Pain Relief Center of Illinois 24/7 at 800-862-5914.
