There is far more to a stroke, either aneurysm or blood clot, than just the focal dead cells. Recovery involves restoring proper blood flow to any damaged but not dead cells but also restoring signaling to the systems those dead and damaged cells normally communicate with. The brain can sometimes connect around those dead cells but it takes thousands of repetitions to strengthen those new routes. Plus, those systems that were used to communicating with the dead cells will become dormant until they have functioning neural cells and systems to restart communication with.

At least that is how it has been explained to me by the experts who address my brain injury support group at a neurorehab hospital. We have many who have suffered severe TBO and stroke and spent weeks in a coma and needed months and even a year or more of concentrated therapy to wake up those nerves that lost connections.

This fits with the neuroscience specialists who report on the nitty gritty of neuroplasticity and not the pipe dreams of those trying to sell treatments, supplements, or get grants. It also fits with what my neurologist brainiac told me.

But then, that is just what was told to me or that I read in the research articles. When an organization selling a product or therapy makes a claim and refers to a research study, it is not uncommon for the study to be grossly overstated.

LLLT, Low Level Light Therapy, makes amazing claims but the research they rely on only shows a 5 to maybe 20% better improvement over the control improvement. If the untreated injury recovers 20% and the LLLT treated injury recovers 22%, if you show a graph that only shows the top 5%, it looks like the 22% is 66% better than the 20%. That is marketing, not science.