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Whiplash is a serious injury, but you may not have symptoms right away. For that reason, if you've been in an accident and think you may have whiplash, make an appointment to see your doctor or spine specialist.

Most simply described, whiplash is caused by a motion or force that makes your neck move beyond its normal range of motion. As you can learn in the Anatomy of Whiplash article, your neck, or cervical spine, has an incredible range of motion. It's the most moveable part of your spine, but still, whiplash can cause the neck to go beyond its normal range.

When you get whiplash, you'll know what caused it. But you may not feel the symptoms of it until sometime later. Symptoms can appear as soon as two hours after your car accident or other injury, but you may experience symptoms that start mildly and gradually become worse. Symptoms can sometimes develop days, weeks, or even months after the initial injury.

When your body is involved in trauma, your neck is one of your most vulnerable areas. Whiplash, the hard and fast forward-backward movement of the neck, can cause pain that can last well after other injuries have healed. To understand why your neck is so sore, it helps to know the anatomy involved.

Say "whiplash" and most of us immediately think of car accident. You're rear-ended as you sit at a stop sign, and your head flies forward, then backwards. It really does whip back and forth, so even though "whiplash" isn't technically a medical term, it's a very accurate description of what happens—and what can cause so much pain.