A lumbar spine injury sustained in a car accident can cause a lot of pain and discomfort, including even leading to life-altering changes. Some lumbar spine injuries include a herniated disc, spinal cord injuries, soft tissue injuries, or even a Chance fracture.
Why Chiropractic Care
That’s because chiropractic care uses natural and holistic methods to help you heal from car accident injuries, including those of the lumbar spine. Chiropractors are experts at diagnosing and treating car accident-related injuries.
Chiropractic care focuses on the root cause of the pain rather than treating the pain with painkillers. No medications or surgical procedures are used by chiropractors to treat car accident injuries. Instead of depending on painkillers to treat your low back injury, you can try one of the many chiropractic techniques to heal.
Several chiropractic techniques are used to treat lumbar spine injuries. One of the most common methods is spinal manipulation. But, did you know that there are many types of spinal manipulations that you can benefit from for your lumbar spine injury?
Here are 3 types of spinal manipulation techniques commonly used to alleviate pain and heal lumbar spine injuries.
- Activator Technique
At the time of a car accident your lumbar spine may lose its alignment due to the impact. In such a case a small handheld device called an activator is used to adjust your lumbar spine.
The spring-loaded activator is applied directly to the affected vertebrae of your lumbar spine. It gently manipulates the spine back to its original alignment.
All the adjustment happens with you lying face down on the table while the chiropractor coaxes your spine back to its normal alignment. You will have to go for regular sessions to really benefit from this technique. Skipping sessions will not help nor will being inattentive to the advice provided by your car accident doctor work in your favor.
- Flexion-distraction Technique
The flexion-distraction technique is used to stretch the lumbar spine. This method is used to treat low back pain including pain that radiates down the leg due to lumbar spine injury.
This is usually seen in the case of a disc injury, when the intervertebral disc slips from its position and pinches a nerve which causes pain and sometimes inflammation. To treat such a spinal injury the flexion-distraction technique is effective and helpful.
You will need to lie down on a specifically designed table for the chiropractor to carry out this technique. The table has several segments and it is used to stretch your spine so the injured disc can be moved away from the nerve it is pinching.
Your car accident doctor will apply gentle pressure not on the area of injury but on the rest of the spine and manipulate it in a pumping rhythm. You should not feel any pain at this time. The goal is to try and gently coax the intervertebral disc away from the nerve it is pinching.
- Drop Table Technique
Just as the name suggests, the table has sections that “drop” at the time of spinal manipulation. Let’s understand what this means and how is this beneficial. The technique uses a specialized table that has a drop-piece mechanism.
The table has individual “drop-pieces” or cushions located along its length. These separate areas or cushions help support different parts of your spine. As your accident doctor manipulates your spine, each drop-piece of the table gently gives way.
What this does is it reduces pressure on the injured area of your lumbar spine during the manipulation technique. The drop-table technique effectively treats low back pain and provides alignment to your lumbar spine.
Let Your Chiropractor Decide What’s Best For You
It is your chiropractor who can best judge which technique will be best to heal your lumbar injury. This will depend on how severe your injury is, what exactly is the cause of your lumbar pain, and what your physical condition is.
You can book an appointment with our car accident doctors in Miami to find out all the various options you have to treat your lumbar spine injury. To speak to our chiropractic experts you can call 305-928-2828 or visit: https://accidentclinicmiami.com/ to schedule an appointment for your customized treatment plan.
