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At-Home Whiplash Exercises: Injury Recovery and Prevention

In part one of this two-part blog series, we went over some of the multitude of benefits associated with at-home rehabilitation for those suffering from whiplash. While services like chiropractic care and massage therapy are often enormously beneficial for such patients, especially those injured in car accidents, combining them with the right at-home techniques will often allow for maximum recovery and pain relief.

At Peterson Chiropractic, we’re proud to offer high-quality care for those suffering from whiplash, with everything from chiropractic adjustments through heat and ice therapy, laser treatments and yes, a number of therapeutic exercises we often recommend to our patients to help them further their own recovery in between appointments with us. Today’s part two of our series will dig into some basic tips on why exercise tends to play a big role in long-term injury recovery, plus some tips on future injury prevention and how these exercises benefit you here as well.

Exercise is Important — Even With an Injury

For some, the natural (and understandable) response to a painful injury is simple rest. And while this is often advisable immediately after the injury, long-term recovery actually requires much more.

Those hoping to recover fully will actually need to incorporate at least some exercise into their daily routines. Whether it’s working with a physical therapist, incorporating some basic stretches or other strengthening exercises at home, or taking part in more comprehensive workouts at the gym after your injury has healed, you’ll need to work with other parts of your body than just those affected by your whiplash. This can help promote overall recovery and help limit inflammation, plus trigger the body’s natural healing mechanisms.

Future Injury Prevention

In addition, the kinds of at-home exercises we’re talking about often play major roles in preventing future injury. If you don’t keep your body healthy and tailor it to its regular activities, there’s a much greater chance of another whiplash-type incident in the future — which can be far more debilitating than any current injuries.

For example, if you do not engage in proper neck exercises, there is a higher chance that you will tweak or otherwise re-injure the area following a similar accident in the future — or even in far less strenuous circumstances, in some cases. This is because when your neck isn’t used to its full range of motion, it can be thrown out of place by even the smallest collisions or movements — and this same theme applies to other areas that may be impacted by whiplash, including the entire spine.

For these reasons and more, don’t be surprised if your car accident chiropractor recommends several home exercises for you to promote further recovery between appointments. For more on this, or to learn about any of our whiplash recovery or other chiropractic care services, speak to the staff at Peterson Chiropractic today.

Peterson Chiropractic is led by Doctor Bradley Peterson, who grew up in Davis County and attended the University of Utah.