The “Magic Pill” for Treatment of Car Accident Injuries

The bad news is that there is no magic pill. There is no way to ensure that people injured in car accidents recover completely.   However, there are a few tips on best practices:

1.   Make sure that you have a really good medical doctor.   If the doctor who you are seeing is not really interested or doesn’t seem to believe you or downplays your pain, you need to contact us.   We have a list of medical doctors who will take your case seriously and give you the best care.   If you have a good doctor, see him or her regularly and tell him and her all of your symptoms – where you have pain, how often, how it is affecting you.   Write detailed notes before you go in for your medical visit so that you don’t forget anything.

2.   In the first six to nine months after the accident, you want to have extensive passive therapy.   Chiropractic, physiotherapy, massage and acupuncture are the leading forms of passive care.  Many people get better results combining more than one form of passive care. At the end of the six to nine month period, you may be completely better, in which case you can discontinue passive care.

3. Do not rely on extensive and frequent passive care after the six to nine month mark.  If you are still having pain after this period, unfortunately, you officially have chronic pain. Research has shown that the best treatment for chronic pain is as follows:

(a) You should follow a gym based or home based stretching and strengthening programme.  You should have a kinesiologist or personal trainer show you what specific exercises to do to avoid further injury.  You should then do the prescribed programme daily, or at least, several times weekly.

(b)  Your choice of passive care is still appropriate when you have flare ups of the pain.  It is preferable to you taking strong pain killers.  Having regular and frequent passive care after the six month mark is not effective. In other words, if you are still having physiotherapy twice  a week a year after the accident, you are likely wasting your time and money.

(c) Seeing a medical specialist to rule out more serious causes for your pain and to make suggestions that will assist management of your pain is a very good idea.

We hope that this best practices primer assist you to understand what may be the best way to handle your injuries.