Originally Posted by Mark in Idaho

Nyy12351,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. Sorry to hear of your fall.

I've had struggles with oral surgery due to crashing blood sugar because of no eating. Yikes. Did the doc consider if you threw a clot and had a ministroke and fell? If dehydration caused you to fall, you would likely have remembered not feeling good for a while before the fall. A TIA can be sudden onset. They commonly cause falls with the elderly.

btw, Bleeds start to resorb in just 72 hours. Imaging is best done at 72 hours to identify any bleeds because they are usually at peak size then quickly start resorbing.

Recovery can be a struggle. The total rest, no cognitive effort is old school. Now, they know better. Stimulating good blood flow in the brain is paramount. You should be trying to find things to keep your brain active in a non-stress way. Working with projects that are manual task oriented is good. The hands cannot work faster than a struggling brain can handle.

Idleness causes stress chemicals that are detrimental.

Good quality sleep is important. Far more important than quantity of sleep. Too much poor sleep is counter productive. You should be waking up alert if your sleep is quality sleep. If you feel sleepy during the day, it suggests you are not getting quality sleep. The neck trauma of many head injuries can cause inflammation that can interrupt proper sleep and breathing. They rarely consider neck issues when they see a serious brain or skull issue.

Subtle neck injuries are often a cause of headaches. These injuries do not show up on imaging. One just treats their neck as if it was injured with good sleep and resting posture and icing, etc. and things can slowly improve. gentle chiro and/or physical therapy can help. Gentle traction and mobilization to help things settle is helpful. Twist the head and pop the neck chiro treatments are often not helpful and may even aggravate an injury.

The brain needs all of the stages of sleep to heal. REM is when the neurons repair. Slow wave sleep is when the brain detoxifies. Both are important.

Your diet is important. Brain supplements and proper food and avoidance is good. Keeping a steady blood sugar may help with the daily swings. Low blood sugar can cause moods. The Vitamins sticky at the top has good info.

Your weekend activities may be successful but leave you fatigued for the weekdays. It is common that a bit of good hormones of a pleasant event can hide the stress your brain is enduring, even if you are taking it easy. Many of us know that these events, though enjoyable and symptoms free at the time will cause us to pay later. I just plan to have a poor day or two after such an activity.

Mindset helps. Expect to have a roller coaster ride. Expect to struggle with stimulation and maybe memory or executive functioning. Getting frustrated only makes things worse and raises stress levels slowing recovery.

Please feel free to tell us anything. We have heard it all.

My best to you.