What can you do after a mild concussion? After something bangs into your head (or your child’s head) there can be subtle changes in brain performance. Those changes may be so subtle that they get ignored for years until you finally realize that something is off. We use a cranial treatment to correct those subtle changes and help the brain be healthy again.
Mild Concussion Treatment
Mild concussion treatment is recommended if you fail some simple functional neurology performance tests. The functional neurology performance tests are very simple muscle control tasks (muscle testing). Testing for a mild concussion could be as easy as trying to hold your arm still.
Why do we need a muscular task to assess brain function? Nothing looks broken or swollen in a brain scan. Brain scans are looking for head trauma that is not mild. A sports-related head butt usually falls into the category of mild concussion. It may lead to an inability of a child’s brain to perform as before. For example: worse coordination, worse athletic performance, imbalance, bumping into things, repetitive injuries, dizziness or vertigo. Also possible are problems with leaky gut, attention deficit, learning problems, or difficulty with one side of the body.
“Mild TBI results in a constellation of physical, cognitive, vision, emotional, and sleep-related disturbances”
(Autonomic Dysfunction after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Brain Sci. 2017 Aug) TBI = Traumatic Brain Injury.
Other symptoms of mild concussion
Symptoms may include: disorientation, trouble focusing, or remembering things, confusion, slower reaction times, and headaches. But there are also symptoms you might not realize need concussion treatment, like stomach ache, nausea, or motion sickness. Does riding in a car makes your child feel sick? Does your child avoid amusement park rides? Any sensitivity to light? Feeling worse or tired after reading, or can’t read in a car, or when watching TV or using a computer? Feeling more tired than usual, or napping more often than before can also be a symptom of mild concussion syndrome.
Your immune system may also change after a mild concussion as in “immuno-excitotoxicity.” That’s from the book: The Craniocervical Syndrome and MRI : Smith, F.W. (London), Dworkin, J.S. (Melville, NY). In other words, you could become sensitive to things that you weren’t sensitive to before.
Minor concussions treatment
Most children who get a minor concussion don’t go to the emergency room(1). As stated above, mild concussions do not generally cause positive findings on MRI or CT scan. Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is “the invisible injury.”
Did you ever have a minor concussion? Most people just ignore the minor concussions they’ve had and don’t remember them. Ever bump into a glass door or window? Did something from the closet fall on your head? Have you had a nose job (rhinoplasty)? Did you have an auto collision and not even hit your head (shaken brain)?
Over time, minor concussion changes can seemingly just be part of your life: such as a mysterious case of constipation, or “gastro-paresis” (2). Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can lead to chronic inflammation of your gastrointestinal system, weakness on one side of your body, feeling overwhelmed, depression and feeling stuck, eyesight getting worse, or unexplained, steady weight gain. A mild concussion can lead to avoidance of certain activities or behaviors involving motion, coordination, or balance (eg. you never go on rides at amusement parks).
Second Concussion Syndrome
Second concussion syndrome or second impact syndrome is when another mild head impact follows the original one. It’s one concussion on top of another. Without resolving some of the effects though cranial treatment, the damage is cumulative. CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) after multiple hits to the head is what pro football players experienced many years later . We want to prevent CTE, and help with concussion recovery.
Doing nothing is a long-term risk for a brain deficit. Grades go down with multiple concussions. The likelihood of going to college goes down with multiple concussions. SAT scores go down with multiple concussions (3), but we can help.
We can determine if you or your child has signs of mild concussion, and help aspects of it to resolve. Don’t rely on cognitive testing alone. There are subtle signs that we observe in our evaluation showing the subtle nuances of mild concussion. Mild concussion treatment is gentle and comfortable.
Don’t accept doing no treatment. Get our help, now.