How Can a Chiropractor Help Treat Headaches After an Accident?

If you are suffering from migraines or chronic headaches after a car accident, getting treatment from a chiropractor is crucial. Without treatment, the severity of your headaches could increase, causing immense long-lasting pain.

These days chiropractors have become the prime choice for people who want to explore non-surgical options for pain relief. Chiropractic treatment can be amazingly effective in treating all kinds of headaches.

Learn more from our chiropractic team at Impact Medical Sun City Center.

What Causes Headaches After an Accident

There are two common causes of headaches after a car accident:

Whiplash: This is an injury due to your head’s forward and backward movement following an accident. This movement strains the muscles in the neck and sprains the ligaments, leading to headaches.

Blunt trauma: Blunt trauma injuries occur when you strike your head on the door, window, windshield, or headrest. The impact results in a headache and other symptoms.

Concussions: During an accident your brain may bounce violently off the inner skull walls, resulting in a temporary injury called a concussion. Concussions are often caused by a sharp blow to the head and can cause painful headaches.

Types of Headaches

There are various kinds of headaches after an accident with varying types of discomfort or pain.

Types of headaches:

Tension Headaches

These headaches result from the tightness of the neck muscles. This tightness in your neck due to stress or injury causes other muscles to step in and become overworked, leading to tension in the neck and head, AKA a tension headache.

Cervicogenic Headache

These headaches originate from the neck. They occur due to a dysfunction in the muscles or joints in the neck. The pain manifests as a throbbing sensation that begins behind the eyes or the base of the skull.

Migraine Headache

Migraines are common after car accidents, especially if you hit your head. You may first suffer head pain that will morph into a migraine; usually a throbbing pain on one side of your head. Other migraine symptoms include vomiting, nausea, light sensitivity, and dizziness.

How Chiropractic Care Treats Car Accident Headaches

Chiropractic care is a natural and effective treatment for headaches following an accident. During your visit, our chiropractors will work on your muscles, bones, and nerves to relieve pressure, eliminating your headaches.

Often the underlying cause of headaches after a car accident is a misalignment in the spine or damage to the vertebrae in the neck or the upper back. Manual adjustment re-aligns the spinal structures and when used with other techniques, it can help improve muscle healing and function in the neck. If necessary, spinal decompression can help relieve the pressure on the discs and vertebrae.

The beauty of chiropractic care is that chiropractors treat the source of your discomfort and pain, not the symptoms.

To treat headaches your chiropractor may use:

Chiropractic adjustments or spinal manipulations
Manual therapy
Lifestyle or nutritional counseling
Corrective exercises

Many times, an accident causes extra stress on the nervous system and prevents your body from functioning normally, thus you get headaches.

Chiropractic manipulation will not only help these current headaches that you are experiencing, but it will reduce the risk of stress and tension building up and causing future headaches as well.

Sun City Center Chiropractic Care

If you want a long-term solution to headaches after an accident, consider chiropractic care. Our team at Impact Medical Sun City Center is well-equipped to help you live a pain-free life. And that doesn’t stop at headache relief, we can help treat other injuries after an accident too.

Call us at (813) 938-5195 for more information or to schedule an appointment today!