Thanks, Heather (and others), for bringing this to our attention. I have never heard that fasting be useful and I am interested in your experiences.

However, I would caution against the "What is there to lose?" attitude sometimes experienced when someone gets postconcussion symptoms. What there is to lose, of course, is gaining a more speedy recovery if nutrition is what your body needs to heal after a concussion.

I feel that after my concussion I probably should have eaten more than I actually did, particularly protein. Logically, as the brain tries to repair itself nutrition is needed in excess of what was taken in before. I maintained a "healthy diet" but in retrospect I wish that I had eaten more, particularly protein, just to make sure that my body had all that it needed. I believe that magnesium is lowered after a concussion so perhaps supplements would be beneficial. I think that this process is more important than just trying to deal with the symptoms of headache, even though they can be really terrible.

Would it be useful to consider two cases?

1 in the immediate aftermath of a concussion, where I would argue that nutrition for long-term healing should be the concern;

2 Years after the event when all the healing that is going to happen likely has happened and one is only concerned with managing day-to-day symptoms. In that case, it seems from what other have reported in this thread that there might be some benefit to some people and it would seem that there would be less risk of doing harm. Even then, I would think that it should be used as a tool to break a cycle of pain, if that seems to work.

I have not tried it but I am interested in the experiences of those who have - so thanks for sharing.

Concussed Scientist