This section will reveal:

• What is Whiplash?
• How Minor Car Accidents Can Cause Long Term Damage
• How Hidden Injuries Cause Joint Arthritis in 5-10 Years
• The Dangers of Treating Injuries with Pain Medication
• How Insurance Companies Manipulate People and Why Early Competent Documentation is Vital!
• What Should You Do?

What is Whiplash?

Whiplash is a sudden unpredictable movement of the head whereby it moves in one direction, comes to a halt, and snaps back in a rebound fashion. Whiplash can be seemingly minor or it can be fatal. Dale Earnhardt Sr. died of a severe whiplash injury when his car hit a wall at 200 MPH.

Doesn't it seem like everyone you know has suffered from a whiplash at one time or another? The long term consequences can range from a little stiffness to debilitating "fibromyalgia." What changed over the years that makes whiplash appear more prevalent? Are we, as a society, more likely to sue than in years past? Perhaps to some degree that's true; but surprisingly, whiplash has been on the rise with the introduction of seatbelt laws.

Seatbelts save lives, period. Only an irresponsible driver would drive without a seatbelt regardless of the type of vehicle. Unfortunately, however, seatbelts do not keep our head restrained, so when a vehicle travels 60 MPH, the heads and necks of the passengers are also traveling 60 MPH. Should an unfortunate collision occur and stop the car instantly, the head, weighing 10-15 pounds, is still traveling at 60 MPH. The head is attached to the body by the neck—in a car accident, the neck becomes a restraint attempting to keep our heads attached. Damage to muscles, joints, bones, nerves, blood vessels, and even the brain can occur. Restraining the torso with a shoulder harness concentrates most of the damage to the head and neck. Don't misread these facts – seatbelts keep a passenger from hitting the dashboard or windshield and ultimately SAVE LIVES! Even so, seatbelts are also the cause a spike in the numbers of whiplash cases.

How Minor Car Accidents Can Cause Long Term Damage

Now that you know about how whiplash occurs, you're probably wondering how it is diagnosed.

The following symptoms are all typical following and accident and should not be ignored:

All too often people have these symptoms and do not associate them with their recent car accident.

In order to better understand the possible long-term effects a car accident victim may suffer, it is important to understand the purpose of the spine and neck. The purpose of a spine is to protect nerves. The spine houses the sensitive communications conduits, nerves, which allow our brain and body to be in constant communication with each other. Nerve damage is permanent and the spine cannot be replaced. Furthermore, the neck structure is basically the same as any other bone, muscle, and cartilage section of the body. Neck bones protect nerves, muscles move neck bones, and cartilaginous ligaments hold neck bones together. Delicate, vulnerable blood vessels nourish all these tissues.

Essentially, the neck and spine work like a machine. As with anything else mechanical, there is a way to maximize the life of the machine – by making sure it is flexible and that one's neck alignment is perfect. Whiplash throws off the alignment of the neck and reduces flexibility. The neck is held in position by some very small and delicate muscles. It might not cause a lot of pain when these muscles get stretched and damaged during whiplash, but in the long-term, your neck is no longer aligned properly, and in fact can stay misaligned for years before symptoms show up. In brief, after an accident, the machine known as a neck will no longer function optimally and that will cause certain indisputable problems in years to follow.

How Hidden Injuries Cause Joint Arthritis in 5-10 Years

You may be wondering why alignment of the neck is important when absolutely no pain is present. In short, our neck and spine are designed to be aligned properly. When they are not, two things happen regardless of the absence or presence of pain: 1) Bones react to alterations in pressure. When the spine is misaligned, parts of the spinal bones will suddenly be subject to much more weight and strain than intended, resulting in increased production of bone (bone spurs). Bone spurs start developing almost immediately and can be visible on an X-ray film within 5 short years! 2) Decay of cartilage also occurs when the spine is under undue stress. We've all heard the lay term slipped disc, but did you know that a disc can decay until there is bone resting against bone? This is known as degenerative disc disease and is often precipitated by the "fender-benders" many of us choose to ignore due to lack of pain.

When bone spurs and cartilage degeneration occur simultaneously, the condition is known as degenerative joint disease, degenerative arthritis, DJD, spondylosis, or osteoarthritis. It is not a hereditary condition, but rather a pure result of damage and misalignment.

You may be asking why degenerative arthritis is bad when you have no pain. Eventually degenerative arthritis will cause pain and the worse it becomes, the more pain you will have. Remember when we defined the purpose of a spine? Its job is to protect the vital means of communication between the brain and the rest of the body. Degenerative arthritis changes the shape of the spinal bones making them larger. Nerves only have so much room within the spine, so expanding the size of the bones encroaches upon the living space of the nerves – not good. This reduction in space for your spinal cord and nerves is known as spinal stenosis, and is a permanent and miserable condition. Whenever you see an elderly person in the supermarket, for example, looking down and walking with baby steps as if they're trying to tuck their tails between their legs, what he or she is doing is trying to relieve pressure on his or her lower back and neck from spinal stenosis. Degenerative arthritis is like a tooth cavity: once it starts it never stops until total destruction occurs; but unlike teeth, the spine is irreplaceable. Do not be mistaken: you are not invincible to the pain of spinal stenosis; it CAN happen to you.

The Dangers of Treating Injuries with Pain Medication

The medical approach to whiplash is to recommend anti-inflammatory meds and muscle relaxors, and for some doctors, to prescribe narcotics. If a patient suffers long enough, perhaps his or her family doctor will refer him or her to an orthopedic surgeon or physical therapist.

If you've read the whole report, you now know that whiplash causes misalignments and misalignments cause arthritis. Taking drugs will often mask the pain long enough for damaged neck muscles to heal, leaving the patient with a pain free, misaligned neck that is now beginning to degenerate.

Suppose the pain didn't go away and you visited an orthopedic surgeon. No question, they are well trained doctors who know about muscles, bones and joints. What if you are hurt, but not a surgical candidate? What good is an orthopedic surgeon other than a referral source for physical therapy or a documentation source for a lawsuit? In fact, very very few orthopedic surgeons even do spine surgeries!

If surgery is not warranted then physical therapy is the next step. As in any other profession, there are good and bad physical therapists. A patient is better off with a physical therapist than taking medications that poison the body and mask symptoms; however, many times medical professionals will refer patients to a physical therapist with an order to evaluate and treat. A good therapist can usually do this, but a physical therapist is not a doctor. Ultimately, physical therapy is an effective treatment, but it is not enough by itself, as it does not place emphasis on spinal alignment. More pertinent, perhaps, is the fact that anti-inflammatory drugs can destroy your kidneys, liver, or heart, and narcotics can cause dependencies in as little as two weeks.

How Insurance Companies Manipulate People and Why Early Competent Documentation is Vital

Prior to 1990, Georgians were fortunate enough to have no-fault insurance. No-fault insurance was mandatory health coverage that each driver carried on his or her own vehicle. No matter who was at fault, the driver's own insurance had mandatory minimum $2500 in medical coverage. When Tim Ryles ran for insurance commissioner, he advertised that he would lower premiums, "no ifs, ands, or buts." Of course, he didn't make it clear that he would stop mandated health coverage on auto insurance. People with no medical coverage on their automobile policies do not receive proper medical treatment; therefore, they don't document their injuries properly. This means they squander any chances in court of getting an equitable monetary award AND they are left with sub-par treatment.

What if the "other guy" is at fault, you may be thinking, won't his insurance pay for my injuries? Yes and no. The at-fault insurance carrier will not, we repeat, NOT, pay your doctors in Georgia. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS! Believing that the at-fault carrier will take care of your needs is the biggest insurance misconception in Georgia. If you're lucky, they might make a one-time payment directly to you, the claimant, to cover medical expenses.

Here's an example of a true case from my office:

A man in his thirties with a wife and two kids gets rear ended one day by a tractor trailer. He suffers from severe neck pain, so bad that there is searing nerve pain radiating into his right arm. This man does not have health insurance – he's self employed and can't afford it. Luckily, his income is so low that his kids are covered under Georgia's Medicaid plan. His car insurance agent never went over the importance of carrying the optional medical coverage on his car insurance plan, so he never bothered to ask for it. (Remember, it used to be mandatory, just like liability). Too bad – he could have carried thousands of dollars in MedPay for under $100 per year! It's a cheap add on!

The injured party goes to his medial doctor who tells him to see an orthopedic surgeon. The surgeon says he might have a slipped disc in his neck and needs an MRI to know for sure. Unfortunately, he can't afford an MRI and the hospital doesn't care who is at fault. You see, doctors and hospitals don't care if a tractor trailer hits you and you are a victim – they put the responsibility on you to pay your own bills. If you don't pay, they sue you. He decides the MRI is too expensive and he decides to live with the pain. He has trouble paying for gas in his truck let alone a $2500 MRI. Each day that goes by he feels pain in his neck and arm. He can't be in a good mood around his family because the pain is so distracting. The lack of sleep causes him to yell at his kids when they've done nothing wrong. He tries anti-inflammatory drugs, but they don't touch the pain – they never do with disc injuries. Muscle relaxors don't help either and just make him tired; besides, it's not a muscle problem. Percocet helps a little, but his family doctor won't renew the prescription fearing addiction to narcotics.

He asks various doctors, in writing, if they would be willing to wait on settlement to get paid and most say no. This is known as a lien on settlement and very few doctors are willing to wait on their money. The man is now up the creek without a paddle, so to speak. He needs surgery, but instead is left with nothing. No attorney will take his case because he doesn't have enough medical documentation to justify a big lawsuit. Even though personal injury lawyers often wait on settlement for payment, they won't take his case because they can't prove his case – no MRI. If the man had medical coverage on his auto policy, he likely would have received neck surgery and settled his case in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead he ended up with $500 from the tractor trailer's insurance company. THIS IS COMMON!!

Insurance companies have you and they know it. Often times they will call you right after an accident to make sure your okay. They want you to slip up, to say something that will hurt your case, to keep you from hiring an attorney, or even worse, to get you to settle quickly. Anything you say can AND WILL be used against you. You can bet on it. They'll string you along acting as if they will work with you, but when the time comes that you ask for a monetary settlement, they bicker back and forth with you for months. This is expected because they have no legal obligation to settle. The good citizens who aren't looking to get rich, but rather just get their medical bills paid are getting the shaft from the insurance companies. The patient ends up being laughed at behind their back because the insurance adjusters know they have a sucker, someone they can string along for at least an extra year before they have to pay out a dime. Eventually the patient will end up retaining a lawyer so that the insurance company will take them seriously.

If you are injured, take care of your injuries first and foremost. Hopefully you will have the proper medical coverage that allows you to receive the finest care. Did you know that a condition cannot be deemed permanent until at least 6 months from the date of injury? If an insurance company checks in on you, it's best to say you will discuss it at a later date. Should you decide to sue or ask for settlement, you have two years from the date of injury to do so. Too often we see people go for the quick settlement and end up with permanent injury later on. The patients often don't let enough time pass to judge the extent of their injuries.

So what do we have here in Georgia? At first, you would think that mandatory no-fault insurance would make insurance companies happy. The truth is, insurance companies don't want mandated no-fault insurance. It allows people to document their injuries and create solid cases. Poorly documented cases save the insurance industry millions of dollars. With the strength of the insurance lobby, we'll never see the return of mandatory no-fault insurance in Georgia.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?