The Ins and Outs of Whiplash and What Happens When It Doesn't Get Treated.

Uncategorized Nov 20, 2019

Do you or have you ever suffered from neck pain and headaches? Was your neck pain and/or headaches as a result of an impact injury or rear end collision? If so, this article contains much needed information that could help change the way you think about your neck pain and headaches, therefore increasing your chance of recovery. 

What is whiplash 
Whiplash is a type of neck injury due to the forceful movement of your head back-and-forth and is most commonly caused by rear end collisions, sporting injuries and other traumas. 

Common signs and symptoms that you have whiplash include but are not limited to:  you have been involved in a situation where your neck has incurred a whip like trauma, neck pain and stiffness, headaches associated with neck pain and limited neck range of motion. Occasionally patients may also experience numbness and tingling in the arms, fatigue, dizziness, blurred vision, memory problems and sleep disturbance. 

What causes whiplash 
Whiplash occurs when your head is thrusted forcefully forward and backward at a rapid rate. This causes injury to the joints, muscles, ligaments and potentially the discs of the neck. The 2 most common causes of a whiplash injury are:

  1. Car accidents - a rear end collision will cause your neck to ‘whip’ forwards then backwards at a rapid speed putting stress through the joints of your neck
  2. Sporting injuries -  football tackles can cause your neck to be forced forwards and backwards


Nearly 50% of acute whiplash will transition into a chronic pain state. You need to be aware of what you can do to stop this from happening!

Acute whiplash is relatively straightforward to treat with manual therapy and should be done so around the time of the initial injury. However, most people don’t get their neck seen to at the time of the injury. This is often because they don’t believe the injury was bad enough to warrant investigation/treatment or that it will just heal on its own. Although there may be little to no pain associated with a whiplash, or the pain may reduce quite quickly, our necks are quite delicate and dysfunctions are still present in the neck after a whiplash because damage has been done. If left untreated, these dysfunctions can become chronic leading to neck pain, stiffness, loss of range of motion and tenderness in through the shoulders which can travel into the upper back and arms. These chronic dysfunctions can also lead to headaches which often start at the base of the skull. 

Once chronic whiplash sets in, the chance of developing neck related headaches and migraines increases significantly. Headaches and migraines can then affect your concentration, energy and mood which then have a flow on effects to major areas of your life such as work, social life and relationships. 

Therefore it is best to get a whiplash injury treated at the time of the incident so that we can prevent these events from occurring. However, if you have a history of whiplash injuries that were not treated and have turned chronic, do not fear. We can help!

Our practitioners have done extensive post graduate training in headaches and migraines so that we can help our patients see the best results possible. The techniques that we use were researched and designed specifically for headaches and migraines so that not only will we help to decrease your neck pain, but we aim for long term results for your headaches/migraines. 

So if you are sick and tired of having constant neck pain and headaches/migraines, call us now on (03) 9486 7543 to see how we can help you today. 

Written by Dr Liam Frazer (Osteopath) - from our Fitzroy North Clinic

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