Tens of thousands of Americans sustain workplace injuries each year, and need physical rehabilitation in order to regain their health and return to the work place. At our clinic in Waukegan, our chiropractor sees many patients with either acute injuries or repetitive stress injuries due to accidents, faulty equipment or overuse of muscles. These types of injuries can be more frustrating than others, as most workers want to return to work as soon as possible. However, if they return before they’re completely healed, or before they’ve learned how to use the injured body part correctly, they run a high risk of their injuries recurring. 

Once the acute symptoms of an injury have been treated, a chiropractic doctor can prescribe a course of physical medicine and massage to promote the healing process. This usually also includes work conditioning/work hardening: an intense form of rehabilitation designed to simulate the demands of the work place while training the worker to be physically equipped to deal with them. 

For example, a mover who’s injured his back while lifting a piano will benefit from a course of physical therapy that includes lifting progressively heavier, larger and more unwieldy objects, and incorporating the use of straps and lifts into the process. A data entry worker with carpal tunnel syndrome can benefit from learning how to use ergonomic equipment; how to position herself correctly; and when to take breaks. A construction worker with worn vertebrae from years of using a man-held ground drill may not be able to return to using the same equipment, but might instead have to learn how to keep his body healthy while using a different type of drill. In all these scenarios, incorporating bodywork into the rehabilitation program can help the muscles relax and heal and thereby minimize pain while stimulating the healing process. 

Auto accidents can cause a wide variety of devastating and even fatal injuries -- not surprising when you consider the impact of one heavy vehicle on another, and the force transferred to the fragile human bodies inside the cabin. Many common types of auto accident injury respond well to chiropractic treatment. Let us examine a few such injuries.

Whiplash can leave you in severe pain and unable to turn your head. If an impact suddenly causes your car’s forward motion to stop, your head can get thrown violently forward and backward, damaging your muscles and ligaments while also creating misalignments in your cervical spine. These misalignments can cause disc problems and painful nerve impingement.

Your lower spine can suffer a similar kind of vertebral misalignment if subjected to extreme torsion or twisting force. This often happens in auto accidents when a seatbelt restrains one side of the occupant’s body more than the other side, allowing the back to twist, discs to bulge and nerves to send pain, tingling or numbness into the legs.

Shoulder injuries also occur with some frequency in auto accidents, especially to the rotator cuff, the group of tendons responsible for shoulder rotation. Once again the shoulder harness may contribute to this problem by applying too much force to the shoulder, or the occupant may receive a direct impact to the shoulder from another occupant of object in the car.

Medical Plan for Rehabilitation Includes Physical Medicine and Physical Therapy

Here at Waukegan Medical and Rehabilitation, we see our share of auto accident victims. Our chiropractic adjustments can return misaligned vertebrae and the delicate discs between them to their correct position, relieving nerve symptoms and allowing damaged tissues to heal. We also use therapeutic massage, physical medicine and other forms of physical therapy to help you rebuild the strength in the affected areas and encourage speedier healing so you get back on the road again.

What kind of injuries have you experienced following a car accident?

Here at Waukegan Medical and Rehabilitation we are proud to be your health provider; and we look forward to providing up-to-date knowledge and information for our patients via this new blog feature. Our Waukegan chiropractor, Dr. Ivan Bracic, encourages patients to embrace total health and benefit from true pain relief. We provide auto accident injury treatment, sports injury treatment, work place injury treatment, and help with chronic injuries such as arthritis and fibromyalgia. 

We are more than simply a chiropractic facility. We are a medical facility that offers natural healing solutions for patients with all types of pain issues. With Dr. Bracic, a nurse practicioner and a physical therapist all on staff, we are here to serve as your "one stop solution" for medical care.

Our Waukegan chiropractor is skilled at using chiropractic manipulation of your spinal column, instrument manipulation on your spinal column such as the ArthroStim and the Graston, physical medicine for rehabilitation, and massage to help in your recovery. Dr. Bracic has been a licensed chiropractor since 1992 and he has had his own chiropractic clinic since 1994. Whether it is sports injury treatment, auto accident injury treatment, or any injury requiring specialized physical medicine, our staff has the knowledge and the expertise to help you heal in a natural way.

We are really excited to be starting this blog because it allows us the opportunity to share information with our clients, and we plan for it to be an integral part of our information database here on our website. We look forward to any suggestions or comments you have for the blog in the future.

What subjects should we discuss here in the blog? Please comment below!