If you were involved in a car accident, and you were injured, the more quickly the inflammation and swelling can be reduced, the better off you will be.

If you think you have been seriously injured, you should begin with the hospital Emergency Room to rule out fracture and dislocation. This is especially important in the spine, as a fracture or dislocation could lead to permanent injury of the spinal cord or nerve roots, and possibly lead to paralysis or death. The emergency doctors will also check your vital signs and perform other tests like recording your blood pressure and heart rate, which may be altered in the case of internal injuries. They will refer you to emergency surgery if needed.

If you are fortunate enough to avoid surgery, then you will probably be given a prescription for pain killers and muscle relaxers, and then sent home.

It will be up to you to decide if you want follow up treatment. You will likely have many symptoms that are not resolved with pills, but not major enough for surgery. These symptoms include things like painful muscles and joints that make it difficult to move, and difficulty with daily activities like walking the dog, playing with your children or even putting on your shoes and socks.

If you do decide to see a chiropractor for treatment of your injuries, there are a number of things that you should look for. The most important, in my opinion, is a chiropractor who uses active rehabilitation as part of your recovery. You see, the body goes through different stages of healing during your recovery. The first is the corrective stage, where the treatment is focused on symptom relief. The goal is to reduce pain, inflammation and swelling as quickly as possible. This allows you to get back to your normal life.

The second stage is focused on helping the body to heal properly. When muscles, tendons and ligaments are damaged, they heal themselves by laying down scar tissue. Unfortunately, the body does a sloppy job with this. The chiropractor can help to make sure all of your joints are lined up properly and that those joints continue to remain free and mobile during this healing stage. This will help to insure that you don’t lose your joint movement from your body’s healing process.

The third stage is the rehab stage. When a person is injured, muscles contract and spasm to protect damaged tissues. Some of these tissues remain short and contracted, not allowing for proper movement, and leave the potential for chronic pain and future re-injury.

Other muscles will become weak over time because you won’t be using them. It will hurt to move, so you will avoid movement. It’s similar to someone who breaks an arm, and wears a cast for 8 weeks. When the cast is removed, the arm doesn’t look like the other. It is weak and skinny. This same process happens to the muscles that protect and stabilize your neck and back. If active rehab is not part of your overall treatment plan, then you are setting yourself up for chronic problems, and future re-injury.

There is a whole other level of care beyond the typical pain killers and hot pads. Without a proper treatment plan specifically designed for you, and designed to correct specific problems of weakness, instability, or other faulty movement patterns after the initial pain has been removed, you are not getting the complete care available to you. This leaves you vulnerable to chronic injury, and makes it more likely that you will re-injure the same area in the future.

Chiropractors are not the same. They take completely different approaches to patient care. Don’t take a chance. Our office takes this complete approach to care, and can take you through all three stages of treatment leading to a pain free, strong, flexible, complete recovery.

As a North Manchester Chiropractor, I have been helping people with car accident treatment for years.  If you think you need car accident treatment in North Manchester, please call us as soon as possible so that we can complete your consultation, and determine if treatment at this clinic would be appropriate in your case.

Furthermore, we can handle your insurance needs, paperwork and help you find excellent legal representation.

It’s important to understand that most people who have osteoporosis won’t ever know it before fracturing a bone. Not even an x-ray done at your doctor’s office is helpful, since a person would need to lose 30-50% of their bone density before it could be detected with a normal x-ray.

The test that is used to check your bone density, and determine if you are at risk for fracture, is called a DEXA. It stands for Dual Energy X-ray Absortiomety. The test will produce two scores that are used to determine your risk.

DEXA scores can be confusing, but they don’t have to be. If you do an internet search asking how to interpret them you’ll end up reading about complicated mathematical formulas, conversions and units of density. In this post I am going to break it down very simply, and no math knowledge is needed. More importantly, I will explain what the sores actually mean, and why you should care.

The test will give you 2 scores. They are called the “T-Score” and the “Z-Score”. Both scores are important, but for completely different reasons.

The T-Score:

The T-score compares your bone density to the average density of a 30 year old person of the same sex. The score will be a positive number, or a negative number. A positive numbers means your density is greater than the average 30 year old (good). A negative score means your bone density is less than the average 30 year old (bad). A score with a negative number less than -1 but greater than -2.5 means you have osteopenia, which is a level of bone density lower than normal, but not low enough to be classified as osteoporosis. A score of -2.5 or lower is classified as Osteoporosis. In other words, this test answers the question: Do you have osteoporosis, yes or no.

What you probably don’t realize is that this information (do you have osteoporosis, yes or no) isn’t enough information for your doctor to make a clinical decision. For many people osteoporosis is a natural part of aging, so more information is needed before making any treatment decisions. Specifically, is it something that needs to be investigated further? Is there some sinister cause for this osteoporosis, or is it “normal?” This is where the Z-Score comes in.

The Z-Score:

The Z-Score compares your bone density to the average density of someone your same age and sex. It compares you to your peers. You see, there are things other than aging that cause osteoporosis. Very serious conditions such as certain types of cancer, alcoholism, hemolytic anemia, hyperthyroidism, etc., can cause a decrease in bone density that could be confused with the normal aging process. By comparing you to your peers it can be determined that your lack of bone density is average, which means it is probably due to aging, or it is more than average, which means it may be a symptom of some other condition or disease.

This is why there are 2 scores. This way your doctor can say:

“Yes, you have a significant reduction in bone density (T-Score), and an increased chance for fracture, but it is average for your age and sex.”(Z-Score)

OR

“Yes, you have a significant reduction in bone density (T-Score), and an increased chance of fracture, and the reduction in bone density is significantly greater than average for your age and sex (Z-Score), and more tests need to be done to find out what is causing it.”

There are 2 things that I want you to learn from this post.

• If someone asks you if you have osteoporosis, and you have never had a DEXA, the correct answer would be “I don’t know.”
• Understand how to read the scores, and what they mean, so you can ask your doctor the correct questions. You should know when you should be concerned, because your health is your responsibility.

Drug commercials are spending billions of dollars trying to sell you Viagra, Cialis, Lunesta, Ambien, Lipitor, Crestor and a list of others for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, insomnia, diabetes, and other conditions that most Americans are likely to end up with sooner or later.

I say conditions because let’s face it, people don’t die from high blood pressure. They die from the heart attack, stroke and kidney failure caused by high blood pressure. Just as bad, the lucky folks who manage to not die from these diseases end up spending the second halves of their lives sitting around nursing homes after having their organs cut out, or sitting on the coutch watching tv because they are too overweight and out of shape to do anything fun.

That’s the bad news. The good news is you don’t have to fight to prevent all of these conditions separately.

Let’s say you are interested in preventing high blood pressure. You would start with your diet. One approach would be the DASH diet, which stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. It consists of eating lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean meats like turkey, chicken and fish, as well as nuts, seeds and legumes.

After diet you would start an exercise program designed to reduce stress and lose body fat. The most common would be to include some type of cardio training like a treadmill, exercise bike or elyptical machine, along with weight training.

The great thing is that this will also help to lower triglycerides and cholesterol, and help you reduce your risk for:

• diabetes
• heart attack
• heart disease
• stroke
• kidney failure
• cancer

It will also help you sleep better, increase your energy and strength, improve your immune system, and make you look better. How’s that for side effects?

In other words, in your attempt to eliminate the risk of one condition, you are simultaneously reducing your risk for almost every other condition. That’s the good news about disease.

If you have risk factors for any of the disease listed above, or are just interested in being healthy in general, I would recommend not going it alone. You have probably already tried that and didn’t get the results you expected. There are a number of health and wellness professionals in the Sacramento area that spend an extraordinary amount of time becoming experts at what they do. Use them. If you need a referral, just call me.

The Basics:

If you were injured in an accident, and the other driver is at fault, there are two injury related coverages that apply to you.

Med-Pay coverage:

This is a coverage that is on your own personal automobile policy, if you elected to take it. It is not a mandatory coverage in the state of California, but if you did decide to pay for this coverage as part of your insurance policy, it will cover your car accident treatment regardless of who is at fault, up to the policy limit. The most common limit is $5000, but your insurance adjuster will be able to answer that specifically. If you were not at fault for the accident, your insurance company will collect the amount paid under this coverage from the at-fault driver’s insurance company after they have paid your medical bills.

Bodily Injury Coverage:

This coverage is mandatory in the State of California. If you were injured in an accident, and the other driver was at fault, you will make a claim under the at-fault driver’s Bodily Injury Coverage. Keep in mind that this claim will be with the other driver’s insurance, not yours. You did not pay for this coverage. The other driver paid for this coverage to keep him or her out of financial trouble in the case that they hurt someone else, and in this case, the person they hurt is you.

This coverage does not pay your medical bills directly, so you will want to have your bills sent to your insurance company if you have Med-Pay coverage (from above). If you don’t have Med-Pay on your auto policy, don’t worry. Many clinics (this one included) will still be able to give you all of the care that you need to recover from your car accident without you having to pay any money up front or out-of-pocket.

Once all of your medical treatment is complete, and you are ready to settle your claim, the at-fault driver’s insurance company will review the medical records and billings, and offer to settle your claim. When the insurance company makes the offer to settle, they are attempting to settle your claims for the following:

• Special Damages
  1. Medical Bills
  2. Lost Wages
• General Damages
  1. Pain and Suffering

It is important that you understand that the settlement offer is being made in exchange for a release of all claims. Once you sign the release in exchange for your settlement check, you will no longer have any claim against the other driver. It is very important that you know what you are doing when settling your claim. You may wish to have an attorney represent you in this matter.

Other Insurance Coverage

The two coverages above are the most common that apply to an auto accident, but there are additional insurance coverages that may apply to your specific situation, such as Un-insured Motorist Bodily Injury coverage and Under-insured Motorist Bodily Injury coverage. These coverages have some interesting rules that make them both unique and complicated, but they won’t fit into this post. Both of these will be covered in a later post.