braindamage,

1st, Where are you so we can recommend clinics?
2nd, Male or female?
3rd, Did you have any anxiety or depression struggles prior to your accident?
4th, What is the Klonopin supposed to treat?

Was the sleep study just a breathing study or did it look at EEG waveforms?

Have you had any therapy for your upper neck? Sleeping postures can cause upper neck inflammation that causes a restriction of blood flow to the brain and mess with quality of sleep leaving your in brain fog.

I call the upper neck issues Subtle Neck Injuries because they have no other symptoms to indicate a neck problem. But, resolving upper neck issues can lead to great improvements. Instability at C-1 to occiput and C-1 to C-2 can lead to inflammation.

A test that might work is simple. Try sleeping in a recliner with your head and shoulders elevated and your head supported in a relaxed straight posture.

NUCCA and Atlas Orthogonal chiropractic or Upper Cervical Physical Therapy may help. Myoworx.com in Guelph, Ontario, Canada does some interesting PT work.

The DTI and SWAN MRI could be helpful in documenting brain struggles but they don't often direct treatment.

A SPECT at an Amen Clinic may be worthwhile. Dr Amen has a huge database for comparison. Check him out on YouTube.

btw, I stopped 14 years of SSRI and take 200 mgs of 5-HTP instead. I do MUCH better with the 5-HTP.

Hello,

Thanks for your response. I am male. I am in St. Louis. I had zero anxiety or depression before the accident. The klonopin was given to me to supplement the Lexapro I guess? Because the lex wasn't helping all the way. I only take the klonopin a couple times a week. The sleeping test they did was an EEG waveforms I had all those things hooked up to my head and chest. I do not think it is upper neck related at all or a neck injury. I've been sleeping the same tempur pedic since before my injury and has always been amazing. The symptoms didn't even start initially which is why I don't think it is a neck problem. I got out of the hospital after my TBI and went to rehab for a couple weeks and was fine for 2-3 years before a huge wave of cognitive decline hit me. No history of mental illness on either side of my family and I have never had these issues prior to my tbi.

But yeah hopefully the DTI/Swan MRI or what not can at least show what is wrong? I've been scrambling for a long time now with neurologists and other doctors to find out what's going on. Choking down benzos and ssris for the next 50 years til I'm dead sounds like a nightmare. I'm only 27 years old. A spect scan, yeah I've heard of that. Dr. Harch uses that to help with treatment for HBOT. To measure blood flow before and after. I've heard of Dr. Amen. Are you sure about him? I've done a lot of research on him. Everything that I have read and listened to and others who have been to his clinics says that he is a quack. His work is pseudo science and he charges like 5k for each visit and offers no real treatment.

Thanks again for your help.

Dr Amen may be able to point to where your brain is dysfunctional. Whether he has the definitive treatment is unknown.

Harch just uses SPECT to demonstrate capillary growth.

Don't discount neck issues. Inflammation can cause serious issues. 80% of concussions include a neck injury that often goes unresolved. You may have had some benign neck event 6 years ago.

What are your B-12 and folate blood levels?

There is also Carrick functional neurology/chiropractic neurology to consider.

CognitiveFX in Utah makes some big claims.

All of these alternatives are helpful to some and a waste of money to others.

The stem cell issue is still decades out. BDNF regulation would be the first accomplishment toward neuroregeneration.

[Anyways, I'm just SO DISGUSTED with the standard of care for this situation. ]

The standard of care is not the issue. If doctors cannot find the problem, it is because they do not have an understanding. There are no magic bullets. There are too many ways head injuries cause problems.

The brain does not heal fully, even in the best cases. I've live with PCS for 54 years, severe PCS for 18 years.

I was on Klonopin and it messed me up, even a low dose. I was sleepy all day after a small dose before bed. I needed it to not have mini seizures during my sleep. Now, I take low dose gabapentin before bed.

The 5-HTP I take increases serotonin. The ssri I took causes so many side-effects.

Your brain does not need 14 hours of sleep if it is getting quality sleep. Something is wrong with your sleep. You may be sleeping and breathing but you are not getting restorative sleep. What did the somnogram say about your slow wave sleep? Slow wave sleep is critical to quality sleep and comes after REM sleep.

btw, You can buy a home HBOT system for much less than a 40 to 80 dive treatment. I had great hope for HBOT but the research is just too inconsistent.

B12 and folate, iron, zinc, etc all levels are with in the normal range. Yeah 5 htp might increase serotonin but there is no such thing as a serotonin deficiency. So just using drugs to make your brain work... yeah this really sucks. 50 years of PCS?? Are you serious? wow. How have you not given up yet? All 5 htp I have taken and heard about it has not worked. Doesn't it have bad side effects long term?? I read a NCBI study that it causes damage to the heart..

What were your symptoms? Were they similar to mine? Like sleep issues, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, chest palpitations? And they get better with just 5 htp?? Sounds too good to be true. I doubt they will ever cure concussions/tbis. It's a damn shame. Such a fragile mind.

Please slow down as you read my comments. You are mixing things up.

[So just using drugs to make your brain work... yeah this really sucks.]

Do you eat so your brain has sugar and other nutrients?

5-HTP is to take the place of the SSRI. It is not a drug. It does not heal anything. Your body already used 5-HTP. It makes it from Tryptophan. If the brain is not requesting enough tryptophan to convert to 5-HTP, you will have a serotonin and melatonin deficiency.

The only side effects from 5-HTP comes when you take TOO much, usually much more than 500 mgs a day. The therapeutic value comes at dose much less than those that cause side-effects.

What are the Lexapro side effects like? It list the same side effects as the paroxetine that I took. YUCK.

Many labs have a broad range of 'normal' for B-12 and folate. The injured brain often needs the high end of the normal range.

B-12 range is often listed as 200 to 900 picograms per milliliter (pg/mL). I try to stay at 1000 at my doctor's recommendation. I take 2000 mcgs of Methylcobolomin B-12 twice a day.

Folate should be 20 or more.

B-12 and folate help maintain the blood brain barrier.

I had struggled with anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, chest palpitations and such on and off since I was 10 years old (1965) when I had my worst brain injury.

I did not get any help until the early 1980s. I learned how to help my brain function better with nutrition and other supplements.

Another event in 1998 and 2001 magnified my problems.

The 5-HTP helps with the anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, chest palpitations. I would get triggered into severe anxiety attacks by over-stimulation. I have rescue Klonopin and propranolol for those events. I have not needed it since I switched from an SSRI to 5-HTP.

You must decide that you are your best help. Doctors cannot do much. They prescribe meds that have limited effectiveness.

There are many injuries and illnesses that cannot be cured or fully healed. Try breaking an ankle badly. I know many people who broke their ankle and ended up needing to have their foot and lower leg amputated. Bones are supposed to heal...... But not always.

Yeah. Life is not perfect. But, we can decide to move on.

If you get stuck in a pity party, I can point you to YouTubes of people who have severe disabilities who get on with their lives. Check out Andy Detwyler at the Harmless Farmer channel.

We may need to just accept our limitations and find new ways to get on with life.

If you're going to do HBOT there's no reason to get a SPECT scan. You know you're injured and it will just increase your odds of a brain tumor later along with the CT scans. What the SPECT scan shows won't affect your HBOT routine. Just get a home chamber setup from Summit To Sea and you'll spend a hell of a lot less than 16k and you can do as many dives as you want. The DTI sounds like a good idea but won't inform you as to treatment, it will only tell you where the white matter damage is.

For stem cells, Dr. Hughes in Colorado is where I went. I've had positive and negatives come from it. Several people I've talked to feel they've benefited a lot. If you're really that desperate, his protocol is far more comprehensive/aggressive but you'll pay $12k after factoring in travel and other expenses. There's also the Vielight.

HBOT is the place to start though. You will almost certainly get something out of it.

I went to Cognitive FX as well but only benefited modestly from it.

As to the future, SB623 stem cells by San Bio are now being tested on brain injury patients for motor deficits. These cells have allowed paralyzed stroke victims to begin moving their paralyzed sides the next day in some cases. After the cells are approved for motor impairment it is likely they will be tested on other parts of the brain. The cells have a wound healing gene which is active in the brains of newborns which recover much better than adults after brain injury. The recovery we will get from treatments like this will likely far surpass what we can imagine today.

Stem Cells - Reversing Stroke Damage - YouTube

Good to hear from you. I've been wondering how you have been doing since the stem cells. What, again, were your symptoms prior to HBOT and stem cell treatment? Did you have heart palpitations, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and oversleeping/feeling like you're in a coma? And how have they gotten better? And what kind of stem cells did you get again? I am definitely going to do HBOT. Then maybe 5htp if that doesn't heal me that well. I'd like to do the stem cell thing if all else fails and I have no other options left. Because I am not taking klonopin and SSRI's for the next 50 yrs til I die. It's ridiculous. Either the place you mention or in Norway that I hear people have had wonderful results from. It's call EmCell in Kiev ukraine. It won't me post links just yet on the forum but look up the god cells: full documentary.

Ok so there is no test for a deficiency of melatonin/tryptophan correct? Yes the lexapro has a couple of side effects but nothing major. I would just rather be taking the 5 htp than taking an SSRI. All the 5 htp I have been taking has been sub par. I purchased from amazon and what not. What brand are you taking and where can I acquire some? How should I go about doing the switch from Lexapro to 5 htp? How much 5 htp do you take daily and what do you think about the common known side effect of 5 htp causing heart damage? How long have you been taking it? Thanks.