post-concussive syndrome and tight clothing
 

Hello,

I have been suffering from post-concussive syndrome for 3 years. My concussion was originally from a car accident. Most of my symptoms are your typical run of the mill stuff. These symptoms are easily googled and dealt with. The one thing I can't find anything on is this weird symptom:

I cannot wear shoes or pants that are too tight. If I do, all of my symptoms are agitated. Dizziness, sweating, light headedness, blurred vision, ect. I have not been able to find anything about this that's concussion specific. Has this happened to anyone else?

Welcome siwaksn. :Tip-Hat:

siwaksn,

Welcome to Neuro Talk.

What you are experiencing could be a sort of anxiety attack. Your brain may be sensing too much tactile sensation from your legs and feet. This can cause an overload of the tactile sensory system.

I have had symptoms similar to this. For me, they give me a feeling of claustrophobia.

You could check your blood pressure and pulse during these events. If they are elevated, it adds support to my comment.

The thought of it being a panic attack has definitely crossed my mind. I have tried to just relax and fight through the discomfort in hopes of it subsiding ( like with regular panic attacks) but no such luck. If it's an overload of the tactile sensory system, would you think general relaxation could make this subside? Or is it simply agitating it and nothing can really be done except avoid the triggers?

Thanks for your feedback!

In my experience, reducing the stimulation is the only solution. The brain just does not have the ability to process so much tactile information. The healthy brain can ignore these sensations. The injured brain can lose this ability to filter out this over-stimulation.

The brain only has a limited bandwidth of sensory information it can process. When one sensory system (tactile or auditory or visual, even olfactory) overloads the system, it can try to take over bandwidth used by other sensory systems. The result is like a computer crash/freeze/slowdown due to too much memory being needed or the memory leaking into protected memory areas.

I found that I need to be cautious to reduce tactile stimulation, especially when sleeping. I also often need to remove my shoes so I can focus to listen.

The brain can be very confusing to try to understand.

My best to you.