Having neck or back pain can be one of the most uncomfortable things to have to live with. Especially if your neck or back pain happened as a result of a car accident, you now have additional things causing you a headache other than just your physical pain. Luckily, there are a few things you can try on your own to help ease this pain and get you feeling better. To show you how, here are three tips for relieving neck and back pain caused by a car accident.
Control The Pain With Medication
Just like with other minor pain that you feel, you can usually use some form of over the counter medication to help with any pain or inflammation you may be feeling in the short-term. According to Dr. William Morrison, a contributor to HealthLine.com, many doctors will first suggest that you use over the counter medications before they result in giving you anything stronger. Tylenol or aspirin can often give you the relief you’re looking for. In addition to helping with the pain, these medications can also help if you’re experiencing muscle spasms as a result of the trauma caused to your neck or back in a car accident.
Try Ice
When you get injured, the area that’s been hurt will often be sore and stiff along with having inflammation. To help ease these symptoms that are generally associated with whiplash and back pain, WebMD recommends that you try putting ice on the area that’s in pain. For best results, try to keep ice on the area for about 15 minutes every few hours for the first few days. By doing this, you can help you ease the pain and swelling in the area. Just be sure that you’re not keeping the ice on for too long or applying it directly to your skin, which could cause more harm than good by hurting your skin as well as the injury underneath it.
Physical Therapy
If your own attempts at relieving the pain in your neck or back don’t seem to do the trick, you might want to consider going to see a physical therapist who can assist you. Rather than trying to figure things out on your own, a physical therapist is trained in ways to help people work through pain and come back to full health. According to Christian Nordqvist, a contributor to Medical News Today, physical therapists can use any combination of exercises, massage, manipulations, heat, ultrasounds and more to help ease your pain and get you healthy again.
If you’ve injured your neck or back in a car accident, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you learn some strategies for how to help ease your pain and get back your full health and range of motion.