Over 3 million concussions occur each year. Many believe there are at least 50% more that are undiagnosed. Concussions can lead to other issues like headaches, moodiness, fatigue, foggy brain feeling, and dizziness. Longer-term effects can include depression and suicide. All these impact the lives of many people with sometimes little to no help. Questions start to come up like can I heal? Can I do some things to help myself heal? Will I always be this way?
You can heal from a brain injury.
What is post-concussion syndrome is and what isn’t? PCS is not the head injury itself, but rather the set of symptoms that may accompany a concussion. These symptoms can be divided into 3 categories: physical, mental, and emotional.
Physical: headaches, dizziness, insomnia, blurry vision, sensitivity to light and/or sound, balance problems, physical fatigue, and digestive complaints.
Mental: brain fog, hard time thinking clearly, slowed reaction time, memory issues, and mental fatigue.
Emotional: irritability, sadness, showing more emotions, nervousness, anxiety, and depression.
Do any of these sound familiar? These are typical symptoms after a concussion. Following a concussion, you move to a “fight or flight” state of being through the sympathetic nervous system. The calming part of the nervous system is shut down. This is Parasympathetic Nervous System. It affects the largest cranial nerve called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve helps control digestion.
When the brain is injured, the area of the brain that controls what gets in and out of the brain is also injured. This is called the Blood-Brain Barrier. When the blood brain barrier area becomes inflamed, more issues occur. What also happens is the gut becomes injured and a person develops a leaky gut. You must treat both the brain and gut if you want to improve. Another problem that can occur is Small Intestinal Bacteria Overgrowth (SIBO) due to the injured gut which allows bacteria to crawl from the colon into the small intestine.
Treatment should include anything that helps increase Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor (BDNF). This is fertilizer for the brain. It allows brain cells to fire together and wire together. This is how the brain heals.
Exercise is key to improving BDNF. Moving to the point that patient can tolerate is important to healing. Historically it was thought that you should not exercise if symptoms occur, now this has been proven wrong. We want patients to start walking, biking, lifting some weights, balance exercises, and core stability exercises.
Next, we need to tackle the inflammation both in the brain and the gut. Things like turmeric, fish oil, taurine, and resolvins, are beneficial. I like to add in magnesium theronate to help with increasing BDNF. Once the inflammation is under control, MCT oil and creatine to help can be added to aid with energy production in the brain. Lastly, we need to heal up the Blood-Brain Barrier and the gut inflammation with glutamine, colostrum, and zinc.
Lastly, vagus nerve stimulation exercises should be done. By adhering to this suggestions you have yourself a great way to heal from a concussion. It can help the prevention of a second concussion as well. The fact of the matter is that the average brain is not resilient enough to handle a blow to the head let alone recovering from it without some intervention.. Doing some of these simple things will help make your brain and body more resilient to your environment.
Dr.Brian Opp, Chiropractor