Quote:
Originally Posted by Colorrado Mike
Mark in Idaho,
Very true and I neglected to mention that in my post. Mine was also a physiological response that I have been able to mostly heal from - like I said, I still have problems with big jolts or bumps. Before I healed my brain, I would get bumped and have to shut things down for a day and sometimes even a couple of days. It felt like I had just had another concussion. One time, it took me a entire week to recover.
I believe the key to healing this is a matter of trying to get any inflammation in our brains reduced significantly or completely eliminated. From my research, I think that our brains lose the ability to handle inflammation. And surprisingly, a physical trauma can actually set of an inflammatory response in our brains. So I think the inability to control inflammation is why we become more susceptible to further concussions.
If we can get this under control via hormone therapy and neurorehabilitation, I believe we can reduce our sensitivity to bumps and jostles.
M
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Collorado Mike--I really enjoyed reading your posts, and I too have done quite a bit of thinking about post-concussion jostling. In my experience, as my pulse increases (brought on by anxiety about getting hit in the head, or just general excitement) my symptoms tend to worsen. I know there is evidence that concussions inhibit the brain's ability to regulate intracranial blood pressure, causing it to increase (and paradoxically, for the brain to get LESS blood). One of my hypotheses was that anxiety could be causing symptoms after small jostles because it increases your pulse and blood pressure, causing the intracranial pressure to increase as well.
I do, however, think it is very important to maintain a degree of humbleness when talking about the mechanisms going on in the brain. Here is the real truth--the brain is so exceptionally complicated that we will not for a LONG TIME actually understand everything that is going on. From our own experience and basic molecular neurobiological research we can make hypotheses, but nothing is an undeniable truth.
Mark In Idaho--It seems like you've thought a lot about concussions and possible biological reasons for PCS, but I would advise you to remain guarded in your assessments. The brain is a massive, massive interconnected web of neuronal cells all communicating with one another in a mysterious, complicated way. Just because axon shearing has been imaged, does not necessarily mean that is the cause of our symptoms. Correlation does not imply causation, in other words. Keep thinking and researching, it helps us all, but just remember that we are not close to having the human brain figured out.