The brain never recovers to 100%. It may recovered to an appearance of 100% but it will be less tolerant to stress. When under stress, the less than 100% recovery may be evident.

You are far too early in your recovery to be worried about how much you will recover. You may recover to 99%. Nobody can predict how much you will recover.

What specifically are you afraid of ? Plenty of people live full lives with residual symptoms from a brain injury.

I agree with many here that the idea of the brain not being able to fully recover is upsetting, and seeing posts on this board, many from you Mark, about how once concussed, always concussed, and that stress will likely bring out symptoms even if they go away, has caused a lot of distress for me. I loved who I was before the injury, as I'm sure everyone here also did, and the thought that that person is gone forever is profoundly upsetting.

So, I'm wondering (and I don't mean to sound accusatory here, I'm not trying to be!) how you (or the field in general) know this? That is, what is the evidence that a single, mild concussion leaves permanent damage that can always rear it's ugly head if we stress our brains? I understand that if there is structural damage, this likely will always be there, but whether or not that damage results in a permanent functional deficit (or propensity for such a deficit with stress) seems harder to demonstrate definitively.

Are there studies that have demonstrated this? Or is this just the consensus of the field, or your personal experience having been an elder on the board for a while and being very knowledgable about TBI in general?

hey...you didn't read my personal study about being completely fine after brutal head on rock concussion during football It happened at 15 and after a while..some months or a little longer, the symptoms were gone and didn't affect me at all like i said. brutal acquired injury 25 years later had nothing to do with this concussion. hang in there kid.

There was a study done back in the 1970's that compared college students who had never had a concussion to those who had a history of concussion. When in normal, non-stressed situations, they performed the same. When put under physiological stress, those with a history of concussion had a noticeable decline in performance. Those without a concussion history performed the same.

When I read this, it put my life into perspective. I have had many times when I struggled during stress situations. I would freeze up during the stress of a test but once the pressure was gone, I could recite the test and the correct answers.

When I live a stressful life with work and such, I struggled more. When I made changes to reduce the complexity of my life, I struggled much less.

Studies have shown that the stress of multi-tasking is damaging to the healthy brain. Those of us with a concussion history need to be even more focused at reducing the stress of multi-tasking and such.

This does not mean our lives are over. Stress is a killer for even healthy people. High blood pressure, anxiety issues, depression, and the related diseases are all related to stress.

For some of us, we need to change behaviors to avoid situations where we may have an unexpected outburst.

I have a question for you guys. What behaviors and activities do you think you will lose out on due to your concussion ?

If you tore up a knee, you would likely have lifelong limitations. Many do and get on with their lives without a problem.

My main fear with this whole concussion is that I've lost who I once was. I used to be extremely physically active as a distance runner, and mentally active as a grad student, and was pretty much always happy or content, and rarely anxious. Now, I can't exercise like I used to, and am afraid that I'll never be able to return to my active lifestyle, which was a large part of how I defined myself. I'm also afraid that I won't be able to return to my PhD program, as I can't read for long periods of time (currently 10 minutes) without exacerbating symptoms.

Most of all, I'm afraid that I won't return to my normal, happy-go-lucky self. If I blew out a knee and couldn't run anymore, I'd at least feel like it was me who would have to deal with the consequences of that. But I haven't felt like me in 6 months, and the prospect of never feeling like me again is scary and sad. It's hard to explain exactly why I don't feel like myself. I'm sure much of it is simply that I'm not doing what I used to be doing all the time, and so I'm anxious and depressed and just don't feel right. But it seems deeper than that, like something about me has fundamentally changed.

All the specialists I've seen assure me that I have a high chance for full recovery, but when I hear you say that stress may always hold me back, I'm afraid that for the rest of my life I'll have to avoid the stress of running 100 miles a week, or reading intensely to study, or staying up late to write up a paper, or spending a month in Hawaiian forests collecting crickets (my current work, haha), or simply think deeply and clearly about an experiment or something like that. I'm afraid I'll have to live my life without this cloud hanging over me all the time, I don't want to always have to think about how every little thing I'm doing might affect the long-term health of my brain.

I also realize that I'm incredibly lucky that things aren't worse, and I don't have to deal with the hardship that many on this board deal with every day (short-term memory issues for instance), but those are the fears I'm dealing with right now.

This is it exactly for me, I feel exactly the same as you do. I had a promising career as a Clinical Psychologist, I was going to apply to start my doctorate this December.
I had 2 accidents, one in December last year in which I'm pretty sure I sustained a concussion, then a minor car accident a month later, after which I started experiencing symptoms.

I returned to work in July for 2 half days and it was just overwhelming and bizarre. I looked over some emails I had written before and some documents I had put together before the accidents and it was like they had been written by someone else.
I can't write to that standard of English anymore or get across complex ideas.

But, like you said, the thing that scares me the most is I feel like a different person. I, too, was very active both mentally and physically. I loved being smart and it was a big part of who I was, gave me a sense of validation, self-esteem and confidence.
I was a very strong, social and independent person and I'm just not anymore.

Now I can't use big words anymore as I'm no longer sure of their correct use and often get them wrong, so to avoid embarrassment I speak a lot more simply.
I don't get jokes, either at all or quickly enough to not look really stupid in social situations (this is leading me to avoid some social situations).

I have no confidence in myself anymore and I have no idea what I can and can't do in terms of my cognitive abilities.
Whenever they are 'tested' by a challenging situation, then I seem to fail pretty quick. I spend most of my days doing light tasks which tax neither my brain nor my body and sometimes I feel 'normal'. I don't feel myself, but I feel like I don't have issues.
However, as soon as I am mentally challenged then this all falls apart and I realise I'm still broken.

I think, like you, most of all, I was happy and a very cheerful person. I don't feel like that anymore. I realised I rarely smile or take much pleasure in doing anything and it's taken me some time to accept that I am depressed.

I'm 7 months in and when I first came on the forum I felt a mixture of relief at finding some answers to questions I had and sadness at the answers themselves. It was hard to read about damage being permanent, but obviously made sense when I thought about it (I studied the brain somewhat, I should have known this!). I'm also awware that it's only some stuff that can be rerouted so to speak, so there are deficits I have that I will always have.

I also felt really down initially at the prospect of never being back to who I was before the accident and I think I've just started the long road of coming to terms with that.

I try not to be negative about it, but instead I feel I'm being realistic. I will never be a Clinical Psychologist now. I may never have a high status/complex job (this was very important to me). I may never improve much beyond my current situation.
BUT, I keep telling myself, like you said, that it could be so much worse and I can still live a very full life.
I keep trying to think of all the things I CAN do and not everything I can't.

I know it feels like a lifetime, but you are too early in your recovery to write yourself off.

You are wise to try and focus on the positives. I try to measure myself by how far I've come SINCE the injury, not how I was before it. I've come a very long way, and I'm still traveling. My initial prognosis was terrible, but I decided to ignore it - and I'm glad I did.

Abbilee,

I have a friend who suffered a severe head injury back in 1996. After he rehabbed, he started college and slowly got through to a master program as a Clinical Therapist. His specialty is helping the brain injured. It took him 10 years to do 6 years of school but he got it done. He has a wonderful family/ wife and child, and is doing great. He lives with limitations daily but still is successful.

There is no reason you can't find a direction that accommodates your struggles but also allows you to be successful.

My best to you.

I had a concussion at age 15 , horse bolted and ran through a fence then bucked me off and I landed on my head, blacked out for awhile but made it back home.
Partially blacking out while horse was jogging and bouncing all the way home.. I had no cognitive or physical limitations after recovery from the fall.

Perhaps age at injury, or time frame of injuries, has something to do with it?
After reading all of the forums here it seems that everyone has such varying levels of symptoms in nearly every condition, it is hard to lock anything to 100% or not.


Now that I know about upper cervical misalignment, this did happen in my case and probably played a part in my acquiring RSI /TOS 20+ years later along with the repetitive work I was doing at the time.

I am most concerned about the brain fog. Does it every completely recover?

My boss has commented that I seem "out of it" for the past week. My job requires me to synthesize different types of information to come up with predictions on the future. This job is extremely cognitively taxing (or stressful).

For my whole life I have been depending on my ability to think well. Having permanent damage is extremely disturbing I completely empathize with Laupala.

Most importantly, if it is true that the brain does not structurally heal, I want to know the environmental factors that prevent things from getting worse (e.g. lifestyle, nutrition, supplementation, etc.). A lot of the brain damage is not immediate, but occurs throughout the days after the TBI. Research has not gotten to this level of detail yet.

Does anyone here have reliable information (from a credible source) on what can be done to reduce brain damage? (e.g. lifestyle, nutrition, supplementation, dosages, etc.)

Even if they discover that supplement X reduces brain volume loss by 10% after concussion if immediately taken at daily doses of Y, it would be very helpful for future sufferers of concussion.