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Whiplash.

Article Excerpt
Whiplash

The harm may occur just before the neck jerks back and forward.

You're waiting at a stoplight when it changes from red to green. You hesitate and then, out of the blue, crunch! * you feel the impact of a car colliding with yours from behind. Your head jerks back, and then snaps forward. It's whiplash.

In technical terms, whiplash refers to the sudden transfer of energy that causes the structures of your neck to abruptly straighten and bend beyond their normal range of motion, potentially resulting in an injury. A car accident is the most common scenario, but it's not the only one. Many kinds of falls, the jerking movement of amusement park rides, and blows to the face can also create the whiplash motion and its related injuries.

By some counts, more than a million Americans suffer injuries from whiplash each year. Many recover, although it may take awhile * weeks, even months. But about half of those affected continue to have neck pain a year or more later, and about 10% may end up with chronic pain that interferes with work and everyday life.

Whiplash injuries invite skepticism. How can a fender bender result in chronic, even debilitating, pain? Imaging tests don't necessarily show anything. And there's some good evidence that insurance and lawsuit settlements do, in fact, encourage some people to exaggerate or invent whiplash injuries.

Yet whiplash is a real phenomenon with real effects. Researchers have identified a critical moment during a...

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