What I wish I knew

What I Wish I Knew Before My Child’s Concussion

The story referenced here is from the point of view of a mother whose child sustained a concussion. She discusses how her daughter was injured, the symptoms she experienced, how long things lasted, and what she wishes she had known BEFORE her daughter ever suffered a concussion.

 

Key Takeaway Points

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Her daughter was accidentally elbowed in the nose. She began experiencing headaches that doctors thought came along with hitting her nose, but continued even after the nose had healed.

She wasn’t involved in a sports injury or a car accident the way many people get concussions. She wasn’t even chemically concussed or re-concussed from chemicals (like food sensitivities or alcohol) due to bad immune systems, poor detoxification systems or even intestinal permeability creating chronic brain inflammation, but that’s a different story for another post (visit here for the story).

The mother went on to say that nobody seemed to truly fully understand the entire cascade of events that occurs with brain injury and concussion,

Let’s take a minute to touch on the major injury cascades that occur in concussion.

In concussion, you have multiple mechanism occurring simultaneously, just as she mentioned above.

The processes are initial injury, in this case an impact to the nose, vascular swelling occurs locally, vascular dilation/constriction, sympathetic activation occurs (scared from getting hit in the nose) immune system mobilization to the site of injury (nose) and in cases of concussion you have inflammation that occurs in the brain.

Microglial cells are responsible for the inflammation in the brain which is normal to some extent after a concussion but should recover within 1-4 weeks, depending on the severity of the concussion, the health of the brain prior to a concussion, the level of microglial cell activation prior to the head injury, the number of concussions the person has had in their lifetime, and how recent the last concussion was.

One thing that often occurs in concussions is microglial cell ramification or to put in layman’s terms, is chronic brain inflammation. The key symptoms in determining brain inflammation is “brain fog”. If you have brain fog, there’s a very high likelihood that you’re still dealing with brain inflammation, microglial cell ramification, immune system activation in the brain, and are at a very high risk for developing near-permanent symptoms if this inflammation isn’t dealt with accordingly.

Brain inflammation can cause headaches, nausea, balance issues, vision issues, pain, insomnia and can lead to breakdown of the gut and chronic issues like autoimmunity. The last thing you’ll ever want is an autoimmunity to your brain tissue, where your immune system attacks your own brain cells.

The best way to promote healing in these cases to use an integrated approach and dampen brain inflammation, support GI function, support the adrenals and sex hormones to improve sleep, and specific neurological rehabilitation for injured pathways that are found after a comprehensive neurological (and structural) evaluation.

Without an integrated approach, you’re bound to jump from doctor to doctor being prescribed medications that are just band-aids, when what you really need is a an office to take a comprehensive look at your brain and body, determine what you need to get you better, and address all the aspects that need support. We are that office.

 

Article review courtesy of Huffington Post