Concussion Recovery Explained
What is a Concussion?
Understanding what a concussion is is the first important step towards brain injury recovery.
A concussion is a form of traumatic brain injury (TBI) that does not show up on medical imaging. This can be confusing because even though you can’t see it, what you feel is real. Basically, your neurons get stretched and sometimes break causing a neurometabolic cascade that disrupts communication between the neurons and the brain.
What Happens During a Concussion?
Your brain goes into crisis mode as excess energy is required to bring your cells back to equilibrium. This disrupts blood flow to your brain which makes it harder for your brain to get energy resulting in a variety of symptoms that is unique for each brain.
Common concussion symptoms that people feel include:
Difficulty thinking clearly/slowed thinking
Poor focus and concentration
Forgetfulness and difficulty remembering new information
Feeling irritable or overwhelmed
Feeling depressed or anxious
Headaches
Difficulty seeing or reading, blurred vision
Nausea
Dizziness
Light and/or noise sensitivity
Balance and coordination problems
Fatigue and low energy
Abnormal sleep
How to Heal a Concussion
Concussion rehabilitation focuses on rebuilding neuronal pathways and forming new ones through relearning patterns. There is so much that can be done to recover from concussion and actually get your brain and body working better.
To start, there are a number of concussion management strategies that will help to decrease your symptoms. Interestingly, the older method of completely avoiding light, screens, and any form of stimulus is now widely accepted to prolong recovery. This is because lack of exposure to light, screens, noise, etc makes the brain increasingly sensitive when you do encounter these stimuli.
Some current management strategies include: improving sleep quality, pacing your day by planning ahead and adding in rest breaks, and focusing on nutrition.
The most effective way to treat concussion symptoms is to perform specific exercises that are designed to retrain your brain and body to function efficiently. Concussion physical therapy exercises include Optokinetic Reflex (OPK) training, Vestibular Ocular Reflex (VOR) exercises, eye teaming and accommodation, cognitive exercises, and more. Specifically there are 5 systems these exercises will retrain:
The Neck
The Visual System
The Vestibular System
The Autonomic Nervous System
The Cognitive System
Properly retraining each of these systems will help your brain and body to heal so that you can get back to being you and doing the things that you love to do.
To learn more about what is a concussion, concussion management strategies, and the specific physical therapy exercises you should be doing to heal your brain and body, visit The Concussion Solution: Master Program. This program provides a systematic approach to help people recover from post concussion symptoms.
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