What is Whiplash? Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Explained by a Hagerstown Chiropractor

If you’ve ever been in a car accident, even one where you “walked away fine”, and started feeling neck pain, stiffness, or headaches days or weeks later, there’s a good chance you experienced whiplash.

I'm Dr. Pat Walsh, and here at Walsh Chiropractic and Physical Therapy of Hagerstown, whiplash is something I treat regularly especially after a motor vehicle accident (MVA). And trust me, even a minor fender bender can pack enough force to throw your spine out of alignment.

Let’s break down what whiplash actually is, how it affects your body, and how we treat it to help you heal properly.

Read Full Video Transcript Here

All right. So, a lot of patients come in, especially after an MVA. What’s an MVA? Good question. A motor vehicle accident. A lot of patients come in with whiplash. We’re going to take a couple minutes and talk about that. It has a wide spectrum of injury, let’s say. My name is Dr. Walsh. I’m here at Walsh Chiropractic and Physical Therapy in Hagerstown, and we’re going to jump into this whiplash.

Whiplash can really range depending upon the force. Now, to begin with, what is whiplash? It is a sudden whipping of the head forward, backward, backward-forward, side—it doesn’t matter. The problem is because the force is so great, and it doesn’t take a lot of—well, the guy was only going five miles an hour. Yeah, but that’s two tons coming at you at five miles an hour, and F equals ma. The acceleration part of that physics formula is the acceleration of your body from zero, not moving, relative to snapping. Okay. It’s a lot of force.

In that, a lot of varied tissue can be damaged, all the way from fractures of the spine. Even like here, if you whip too hard, too quick, too strong, you’re going to start to fracture the vertebral bodies. You’re going to tear ligaments. You can damage discs depending upon how hard. Other tissue that you don’t even think about—muscle tissue, big muscle tissue in the cervical part of the spine—can be damaged.

Typically what happens is it’s that whipping of the head and you tore tissue. How bad did you tear it depends—the more force that your body has to deal with because that force is coming in and out of you quickly. What happens is that force is so strong that it moves your body for you. You’re not moving it. It’s moving it, and it’s working its way out of you. When it goes that kind of quick, tissue is going to be damaged. And the faster the vehicle had gone to hit you, the more damage can happen, or the vehicle that you’re in that you hit—same thing.

So, what it is, is the way that the body deals with the force presented to it at that moment. And the level of injury can vary severely. You can tear arteries if it’s too forceful. But typically, what you’re doing is you’re tearing ligaments in the spine—the ALL, PLL, the yellow ligament. Those are usually gone, along with smaller muscles. The greater the force, the larger the muscle that’s going to be torn.

Now, what’s funny about this is you can have support of level of injury in an X-ray. How so? Good question. Because when you do have an injury in whiplash, you can tear the ALL and the yellow ligament back here. You have a natural curve. Now, this is not a natural curve. A natural curve is a lot more because the ear is usually going to be over the bottom of the cervical spine. That’s the right amount of curve.

But in an X-ray post-whiplash where those ligaments were torn, you have no more cervical curve, or you have what’s called an anterior curve—it goes the other way. Now, there’s a reason why your body is the way it is and is supposed to be the way it is. If there’s any variation, the more you come off of that, the more problems you’re going to end up having because the reason you have curves in your spine, when you look from the side, is to help deal with forces.

So, if you have a curve that’s less than optimal range, it’s not dealing with the forces correctly. What happens is you’re going to degenerate quicker because the forces accumulate. And then if you have a reversed curve, it’s called a reverse curve, there are a lot of problems. You’re going to end up with degenerative disc, degenerative joint in that part of the spine. And that goes for the whole spine too. Whenever it comes further away from normal, the more problems you’re going to end up with.

Now, this gives you problems because you no longer have a cervical curve. The ligaments were torn; they’re injured. Can you ever regain that back? Yes, you can. Is that 100%? No, it’s not. Can we improve? Yes.

So typically what happens after that is, of course, if you have that kind of injury, usually you’re going to have other things. Typically the worse the whiplash, you’re going to have other injuries. You’re going to have seatbelt injuries where they dig into your shoulder, your sternum, your waist, the hip, depending on what chair you were in—passenger or driver. Low back also.

You can have what’s called a seatbelt fracture in the spine, where the seatbelt held part of the body back in the force of the impact, so the vertebral body kind of shears in half. These are all possibilities in a motor vehicle accident.

So typically what we do is, if they have a severe or even mild to severe injury—and the age of the patient or the health of the patient has a lot to do with this too—it’s more than just the cervical spine where the problems are. But typically what we do is, number one, we don’t want to stress the system too much because they don’t have the stabilizing ligaments to hold the cervical spine. Sometimes you do see people in braces.

So this is wide varying, to where you can have minor tears and soreness for a relatively short period of time—maybe a month, maybe two—to long term. This is why insurance companies hate this, because soft tissue injury varies from person to person, to be honest with you. And no doctor can tell you, “Oh, you’re better,” because you’re not. They don’t know. It varies.

Even though tissue may look like it healed visually, it hasn’t. It takes a long time. And a lot of it is connective tissue, so they’re avascular. It takes a lot longer. Typically, I don’t see issues with the spinal cord in an MVA because that’s a lot of force or a lot of head movement. But you do typically see ligament injury, some minor muscle injury, and even some bone injury—bone bruising.

Typically, what we would do is evaluate. We would get X-rays right away. In fact, usually, if it’s that bad, you want to go straight to the hospital right after the MVA, and that’s what I recommend you do. Because now we need to set up a baseline. That gives me a baseline. You can go to the hospital, get X-rays. They may give you muscle relaxers, painkillers, whatever. But that doesn’t mean don’t come here.

What that means is get treatment here because you need a lot of healing. And what we’re trying to do is bring back that curve and have it heal in the curve. How do you do that? Good question. Through adjustments, through exercise. Typically, you don’t do any stretching right off the bat. We just want to adjust you, get those tissues to relax, get you stabilized as quickly as possible.

But that’s whiplash. It’s very serious. It really is. I’ve had a number of people who had an accident and they walked away—nothing, didn’t bother me—and then a month later it starts. That can happen too. That’s why insurance companies hate it, because you can have a delayed reaction to the trauma.

What Is Whiplash?

Whiplash is a sudden whipping motion of the head that occurs when the body is jolted unexpectedly, like in a car crash.

Even if the other car was only going five miles an hour, physics tells us that mass times acceleration still equals force. That force doesn’t have to be massive to cause real injury. Your body can go from still to violently moving in milliseconds. And when that happens, your neck moves faster than your muscles and ligaments can handle.

What Gets Injured in a Whiplash?

Depending on the speed and impact, whiplash can range from mild to severe. Common injuries include:

• Torn ligaments (like the anterior longitudinal ligament or ALL, and the ligamentum flavum)

• Muscle strain or tearing in the cervical spine

• Disc damage

• Fractures of the vertebrae

• Loss of your natural cervical curve (seen on X-rays)

• Seat belt-related injuries to the chest, hips, or lower back

• In some high-force cases, even arterial tears or spinal fractures

Sometimes, the biggest sign of whiplash doesn’t show up until weeks later, which is why many people don’t connect the dots right away.

How Whiplash Shows Up on X-Rays

One of the most important things I look for in post-accident imaging is your cervical curve. Normally, your neck should have a healthy forward curve. But after a whiplash injury, that curve might disappear or even reverse.

That change in curvature is a major red flag. It tells us ligaments have been damaged and the spine has lost its natural shape. When your neck no longer has that curve, it can’t properly absorb or distribute forces. Over time, that leads to:

• Degenerative disc disease

• Facet joint arthritis

• Chronic neck pain and stiffness

And the more your spine deviates from its natural shape, the more stress your body takes on with everyday movement.

Why Whiplash Is So Tricky to Diagnose and Treat

Here’s the frustrating part for both patients and doctors: soft tissue injuries don’t always show up right away. And because ligaments are avascular, they take much longer to heal.

Even if you feel fine right after the crash, that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear.

And just because tissue “looks” healed on the outside, doesn’t mean it is. It could take weeks or even months for the symptoms to fully surface. That’s why insurance companies often fight these cases, because recovery isn’t always a straight line.

What We Do for Whiplash at Our Clinic

The first thing I recommend is to go to the hospital immediately after an accident. That gives us a solid baseline of imaging (X-rays, possibly CT or MRI) and documents the incident.

Once you're medically cleared and stable, that’s where we come in.

At my Hagerstown clinic, here’s how we approach it:

1. Establish a Baseline

We start with a physical evaluation and a detailed review of your imaging. If you haven’t gotten X-rays yet, we’ll make that happen.

2. Early Phase: Gentle Stabilization

No intense stretching or exercises right away. We focus on:

• Spinal adjustments

• Light mobilization

• Muscle relaxation techniques

• Protecting the injured ligaments while reducing inflammation

3. Rebuilding the Curve

Once your body starts calming down, we work to restore that cervical curve through:

• Targeted adjustments

• Guided spinal rehab

• Postural retraining

• Specific exercises to strengthen deep neck stabilizers

The goal is to heal your spine in the right shape, not just patch up pain and send you out the door.

Final Thoughts: Don’t Wait for It to Get Worse

Whiplash isn’t just “neck pain.” It’s a real injury that can cause long-term spinal degeneration if left untreated.

And because it often starts small and builds slowly, many people don’t realize how serious it is until they’re dealing with chronic headaches, reduced mobility, and nerve symptoms.

If you’ve recently been in a motor vehicle accident, no matter how minor, don’t wait to get checked. Whether you're already in pain or not feeling it yet, let’s establish a baseline and make sure you're healing the right way.

If you're in the Hagerstown area and think you may have whiplash, schedule a consultation at Walsh Chiropractic and Physical Therapy of Hagerstown. We’ll assess your spine, review your imaging, and create a personalized care plan to help you recover properly—before things get worse.