Whiplash Injury – Symptoms, Treatments, Recovery A broken bone shows up on a simple X-Ray, a nerve pain can show up on an MRI scan. But whiplash injury? It can often not be as direct of a finding as a broken bone or pinched nerve. Whiplash injuries often involve an unpredictable combination of injuries and sensitivity to the nerves, muscles, joints, and surrounding connective tissues (like your joint capsules and ligaments). This makes it not as simple to diagnose, and not so simple to treat. This article will help you to understand the nature of whiplash injuries and how they should be treated. What Is Whiplash? Let’s start with defining what exactly whiplash is. Years ago, scientists thought that whiplash injuries happened from, well, whipping your head back and forth too much! They thought that if the head was moved beyond its normal ranges, say extremely forward or extremely backwards, this was what caused a whiplash injury to the muscles, joints, and nerves around the neck and head. Now, the current definition of whiplash is, “bony or soft tissue injuries” resulting from “rear-end or side impact, predominantly in motor vehicle accidents, and from other mishaps” as a result of “an acceleration-deceleration mechanism of energy transfer to the neck”. This means that if the head moves back and forth quickly enough (usually from a rear-end accident or impact), even if the range is not huge, it can cause a whiplash injury because the speed is what transfers energy and injury to the head and neck – not the range. Common Accidents That Cause Whiplash Injury The common situations where a whiplash injury can occur are: Car Accidents When you get rear-ended, your body goes through an extremely rapid and intense acceleration and deceleration and takes your head and...