Entering month 5, my feeling is fairly consistent with the past month. The sense of “depersonalisation”, a distance from reality, still remains with no noticeable improvement. The feeling of a detachment from reality doesn’t appear to be effecting cognitive ability and overall I seem to be getting used to living with it.

I have had a couple of weeks of good amounts of energy throughout the day and evening which seem to correlate with reduced sleep despite me focusing on trying to increase sleep. My sleep posture, on my side, is a work in progress as I adjust pillow height with towels under a memory foam pillow to achieve the right height. Over the last week I have found that I’m waking up between sleep cycles and finding that I'm naturally waking before my alarm and needing less sleep than previously. This may be a cycle that I'm going through or it could be a sign that I am returning to my pre-concussion sleep requirement of around 7 to 7.5 hours per night.

My diet has been important to me, not just because of the concussion recovery but in general I recognise that when I’m outside of the home I can easily be let astray. I have been trying to improve my lunches with salads containing plenty of nuts, fish, vegetables, and peas. I find I can eat a lot without feeling lethargic afterwards and this provides me with energy for the rest of the day and is likely the link with my increased daily energy.

In conjunction with this diet improvement I am trying to drink 2 to 3 litres of water a day and have started carrying a water bottle with me as much as possible to provide a stimulus to drink. I’m probably about a month into it at the moment and have slackened off over the last week but am conscious of it and am picking it up again.

I’m trying to tie my supplements into my eating habits as well and have begun to string out the fish oil tablets over the day with my meals, totalling 1,000mg of DHA per day. I take a multi-vitamin with breakfast and try to ensure I don’t take it on an empty stomach because it makes a noticeable difference to my urine indicating I’m passing it relatively quickly when taken without food.

I’m about 3 weeks into taking vitamin B12 (1,000 mcgs) every morning on an empty stomach about 1 hour before breakfast. Initially there was a noticeable energy boost when taking this which would have been a placebo effect. I have noticed some increase in concentration ability over the day so I will continue with this into the future. Currently I’m taking 1,000mg of DHA (fish oil) and 1,000 mcgs B12 per day plus a multi-vitamin.

I very recently saw a chiropractor who has set me up with some exercise for posture overall and didn’t find anything concerning with my neck – my main concern had been C1-C2 following online research and forums. He will continue to work with me on my overall posture and this will also focus on my neck as part of this but at present there hasn’t been a specific issue found. I have no neck ache or pain.