March 2009

The Natural History describes the course of the condition if there is no treatment.  So, if we just watch whether people get better or worse, how long it takes and if they can recover completely [or not] – we then know the natural history of the condition. Knowing this is incredibly useful. If you come down with influenza – fever, aching and feeling like you are going to die – this can be potentially devastating. However once you or your doctor diagnoses influenza – you know the natural history is that you will continue with a fever for a week and then recover completely in the vast majority of cases. This is incredibly reassuring and powerful knowledge.

So, take for example, the natural history of whiplash injury in the neck. Here you are usually involved in a motor vehicle accident where someone drives into you from the rear. Your body shoots forward and up and your neck flies backwards. In the beginning you feel mild discomfort, but within a few hours your neck is really sore and you often have a headache plus real difficulty moving your neck. This is obviously really worrying and you may have heard horror stories about whiplash- further compounding your concern.

However, the actual epidemiological evidence [ long word for scientific observation of illness in populations ] shows that the outcome is really favorable.

By 3 months over 55% people have fully recovered. 70% recovered by 6 months & 82% by 2 years. Only 4% had severe ongoing pain at the end of 1 year.

So, after all those figures – over 95% of people involved in a whiplash incident will have only mild pain or none at all.

Understanding that you are going to get better will help your healing and reduce your suffering. This is because you cannot separate your mind from your body- they always function as one.

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