Common Injuries After a Car Accident

Even low-speed crashes can lead to injuries, especially when your body experiences a sudden stop, twist, or jolt. Some of the most common conditions we see at Everett Spine & Rehab include:

1. Whiplash: Often caused by rear-end collisions, whiplash affects the neck muscles, joints, and ligaments. You may not feel it right away — pain can build over hours or even days. Mayo Clinic explains whiplash symptoms and treatment.
2. Lower back pain: Compression from seatbelts or poor spinal alignment during impact can lead to disc irritation, muscle strain, or sciatic nerve issues.
3. Shoulder injuries: Bracing for impact or gripping the wheel tightly can strain rotator cuff muscles or irritate joints.
4. Headaches and dizziness: These may indicate neck tension, post-concussion symptoms, or nervous system involvement. The NIH outlines how musculoskeletal and neurological injuries may emerge after trauma.
5. Soft tissue strain: Even without broken bones, your muscles and fascia may still require care and rehabilitation.

Why Symptoms Can Be Delayed

After an accident, adrenaline can mask pain. That’s why symptoms like headaches, stiffness, and back pain may take hours or even days to appear. As the CDC explains, early evaluation helps prevent small injuries from becoming chronic issues — especially when joints and soft tissues are involved.

Physical therapy focuses on helping your body regain movement, reduce pain, and restore functional strength. The American Physical Therapy Association explains that PT may support recovery by improving mobility, reducing inflammation, and preventing long-term complications.

At Everett Spine & Rehab, our PT plans are designed around your individual injuries and goals. We may use:

1. Stretching and manual therapy to reduce tension and improve flexibility
2. Stabilizing exercises to restore safe movement
3. Postural retraining to help you recover without creating new strain
4. Dry needling or massage therapy for persistent soft tissue pain
5. Progress tracking and education so you can safely return to driving, work, or recreation

In some cases, dry needling may also be included in your recovery plan. This technique involves placing very thin needles into tight or sensitive muscle areas (known as trigger points) to help reduce tension, improve blood flow, and restore normal movement patterns. After a car accident, many patients develop guarded or overactive muscles — especially in the neck, shoulders, or lower back. Dry needling may help release these tight areas so that physical therapy exercises are more effective and comfortable.

Summer is full of distractions — but if you’re feeling post-accident pain, it’s important not to wait. The National Safety Council notes that many accident-related injuries go untreated or underreported, especially during the summer.

Whether you’re experiencing neck tension, shoulder pain, or persistent headaches, early intervention may make your recovery smoother and more complete.

Closing Thought

Summer should be about movement — not managing lingering discomfort from a car accident. If you’ve been injured in Everett, Mukilteo, Mill Creek, or surrounding areas, our team is here to help. With licensed physical therapists, massage therapists, and chiropractors working together, we support your recovery every step of the way.

Programs and resources available for pain management are varied depending on the root cause of the pain. Carefully considering which route to take may lead to help from either a chiropractor or a physical therapist.

A physical therapist may recommend a routine of exercises. A Chiropractor may suggest spinal adjustments.

Deciding what resource to seek out or what strategy to take is an individual preference. Other deciding factors may be the stage of the injury or the pain level.

In the United States, research estimates that back pain costs up to $200 billion a year. Patients seldom address the causes of the pain, and the discomfort is often just masked with medications.

Chiropractic care and physical therapy are alternative treatments for pain medications and muscle relaxants. Both options are worth exploring before deciding on the last resort of surgery.

Both Chiropractors and Physical Therapists analyze their patient’s overall health issues and how the spine, joint health, and posture affect the pain levels felt by the patient.

Physical Therapists tend to be affiliated with a medical practice or hospital. Chiropractors are generally independent and operate an individual office.

A Physical Therapist’s treatments usually focus on joint therapy and function using targeted exercises to adjust the movement.

Chiropractors are usually focused on the whole person and use a hands-on approach to align the spine. The Chiropractor designs a healing plan for their patients considering a patient’s diet, exercise, and stress management.

Both Chiropractors and Physical Therapists work with analysis equipment like ultrasound, laser therapy, and electrical muscle stimulation.

When to Get Help for Joint Pain

Emergency care is necessary if the injury results from an automobile accident, fall, or sports activity.

Chiropractors and Physical Therapists may be able to bring relief to the chronic hip or joint pain. If the pain causes weakness, numbness in one or both legs or arms, and is bothersome at night while lying down or movement during the day.

Enduring pain is not an option for patients. Seeking help from Chiropractic and Physical Therapy sources outside of medication management or surgery may be an alternative worth exploring. At Everett Spine & Rehab, we offer non-invasive and drug-free treatment options for patients. Please reach out to us to learn more or to book your appointment: 425-347-8614.

I’d like to talk to you about sciatica, what causes it and what can be done about it.

There are several causes of sciatica. The sciatic nerve is about as big as your pinky and runs all the way down from your low back down your leg, to your toes. When this nerve is pinched or being impeding some way, the pain it causes is called sciatica.

The sciatic nerve can be pinched or impeded in several different areas along that route to your foot. The first area where it can be pinched is in the lower back itself. This can happen because of degeneration of the spine or the discs–remember, they’re the shock absorbers of your spine start to wear out. As they get thinner and thinner, there’s less space for the nerves to exit out. If they run out of space, those nerves can be pinched and can cause pain running down both legs, not just one side or the other. Also if the vertebra in the area are misaligned, or if there’s an accident that cause a lot of inflammation, this can also cause pain that runs down the leg. So sciatica can come from degeneration in the spine or disc herniation which is similar to rupture.

The other area sciatica can come from is from your piriformis muscle. Some of you may have heard of this muscle. It goes from your hip to your tailbone and it connects those two bones. It also helps when turning your foot in and out. The piriformis muscle can go into spams for various reasons. Sometimes it starts to go into spasm because it’s trying to compensate for weak muscles surrounding it. If the muscles have become weakened due to lack of use in the butt area, the piriformis muscle starts to tighten up. The sciatic nerve passes either directly below or sometimes through the piriformis muscles so when piriformis muscle the tightens up, it goes into spasms, it can pinch the sciatic nerve in that spot and cause pain all the way down the leg. Sciatic nerve pain can be completely debilitating to the point where someone can’t walk, can’t think, can’t concentrate–it can be very, very painful and can stop a person doing their activities at work, at home, at school, or wherever they may be.

When somebody comes to us with sciatica we do a very thorough examination and diagnostic test to find out what is causing it. We can’t treat someone or tell someone we can fix their problem until we know where the pain is coming from.

Once we know what’s causing it, we can offer appropriate recommendations. Our recommendations might include physical therapy to stretch that muscle and strengthen the ones around it, it might also include a trigger point injection right into that muscle to get it to relax–that provides some immediate relief. And we might recommend decompression for the spine as we separate those discs and vertebrae, to open up that space it’s going to take that pressure off that nerve and the patient will feel a lot better and it’s also going to help rehydrate those discs.

Everett Chiropractic Adjustments, Snohomish County

We also may probably recommend chiropractic adjustment, just to make sure the bones and joints are moving properly and freely like they should. There are a lot of other treatments we can do such as cold laser, Graston Techniques, ultrasound, muscle therapy, like massage and other types of injections. But we don’t know what’s going to be the best for our patient until we are able to properly evaluate them. Please contact us at 425-347-8614 to schedule an appointment today. We are located in Everett, nearby Mukilteo, Marysville and Lynnwood.