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Hi. I’m Dr. Ryan Johnson from Integrated Chiropractic and today we’re going to be talking about how do I know if I have whiplash. So whiplash is a common term for a soft tissue injury to the neck. It usually comes after a car accident. It can also happen during sports injuries, for example soccer when you’re hitting a ball, football. That’s common. We’re going along at a certain pace and all of a sudden a fast force jars our neck forward. You can see in the model what happens is our neck has a nice backwards lordotic curvature and when it gets hit from behind, the side or the front, it can snap really fast and you can see that force actually whips the skull back and forth, hence they call it whiplash. What will happen is a lot of times patients get into a car accident, even a minor fender bender, and your neck is jarred forward. When that happens, it releases inflammation. Maybe cause some swelling and so a lot of times people complain of a really tight or stiff neck. You may not be able to turn it very far. You may be even getting some headaches from the swelling and a common question we get is, “What stretches are good for whiplash?” In my professional opinion, I don’t believe stretching right after an acute whiplash injury is good. What I think happens is you keep straining or stressing those muscles even more and it causes more pain. So what I usually tell patients is just to remain neutral. Sometimes we will get them a cervical collar or a neck brace but I usually tell patients just relax. Try and keep your head as neutral as possible until you’re not turning or twisting. Typically with whiplash injuries, we like to use cold laser therapy. That really helps with the inflammation, with the swelling and with the pain and it’s very general. So we don’t have to force or manipulate the spine and it allows the body to heal up naturally and quicker. So that’s how we describe and treat whiplash here at Integrated Chiropractic. So again give our office a call at 941-487-0266.