See this sticky thread for tips, treatments -

Anxiety, bumps, symptoms , treatment info links

I would simply like to observe that there is no evidence that this sustained sensitivity is due entirely to anxiety. Some of your posts give the impression that this sensitivity is entirely psychosomatic. I know of no evidence for that hypothesis.

What there is evidence for is that anxiety probably plays a significant role in sensitivity to small bumps. However, I think it is pretty certain that inflammation and neck injuries play a role too. Inflammation undoubtedly.

Do we know if these incidents and inflammation are damaging?

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I agree that neck and soft tissue factors can often be an issue especially when jolts & little bumps flare up symptoms.

I often suggest to new members, expert PT or expert chiropractic evaluation for misalignments, strains & related soft tissue injuries, whiplash, trigger points...it is just a good idea to get those possibilities checked out..
Also upper cervical assessment if needed..

It does not take much force to misalign the c1 c2 or strain neck muscles..

If you look at all of the claims of being bumped and having symptoms come roaring back, the vast majority do not even qualify as neck trauma.

Guys, How do you react when you see somebody hit in the groin on TV or even in real life? Often, it is a whole body flinch.

When I see somebody hit in the head on TV or Netflix, I get a visceral reaction almost like an electric shock.

When I am startled, it can take me an hour to settle my body and mind down.

If I bump my head as I often do, I just acknowledge the bump and move on. Sometimes, my brain will sense an impending bump and respond with Ouch, even if I did not make contact.

If somebody asks me about concussion headaches, which I have had many, I will sense a headache until a few minutes after the conversation ends. I have had chronic headaches that lasted 6 to 9 months twice in the last 25 years after a concussion. My brain has memorized that sensation very well.

Every symptom of a concussion can be caused by the brain replaying memories of past symptoms.

Amputees often experience something called phantom limb pain. It feels like their missing limb is in pain. They have no nerves within a foot of where the pain sensation is. The brain has memorized the pain experienced before the amputation and when it is triggered to check on that pain, finds no sensation so it plays the old pain from memory.

The more people play these old memories, the more this phantom concussion symptoms will play. Some call it a flashback. Some say it is PTSD.

I wonder if a therapist skilled with EMDR (Eye Motion Desensitization and Retraining) can help. It helps a lot of trauma victims.

I used to have bad set backs from turning my head from side to side until I realized it was causing neck inflammation. I learned to moderate such movement and my neck developed better stability. It took more than a year to see improvement. How many of you have been disciplined to moderate your lives to help your body and mind heal?

It was no different than me needing to learn better discipline regarding my injured back and shoulder. It took 2 years consistent discipline of not doing things that strained my back and shoulder to see improvement. The physical therapist had been pushing me to hard.

We need to take charge and be our own best healer.

I understand that some people do have a real fear of getting another concussion. which can give them a dose of adrenaline, and they feel weird for a couple of hours. I also understand that neck injuries can cause discomfort and other symptoms with quick head movement.

I would describe what I have as "motion sensitivity", and it is neither of those things. I know I'm not the only one because I have seen others describe this in detail. I've gone to great lengths to figure this out. I've now had three neurologists tell me that I'm having migraine attacks (with a primary symptom of dizziness--not headache, sometimes referred to as vestibular migraine).

The first neurologist to give me that diagnosis is the lead concussion consultant for the NBA and NHL. He also does work for the NFL and sees primarily professional athletes. He is known as a global leader in the field. I saw him on Skype because he is not in my state, and it was very expensive because he is out of my network. He said he sees what I have often, and its common for other doctors to have misdiagnosed it as either concussion or anxiety. He told me that the exaggeration of motion that I feel is a sensory sensitivity (just like light or sound sensitivities, but slightly less common and more difficult for people to describe). He said extreme sensory sensitivities are kind of the hallmark of migraine.

He told me that it's common, for example, for him to see a hockey player with a history of head injury and have them report that they fell on their butt on the ice and now have the same symptoms that they get after a concussion. Falling on your butt on ice should not generate enough force to cause a concussion. The nerve cells in your brain need to be physically stretched enough to open mechanical gates that allow ions to move into the cells and cause an energy crisis (which is all a concussion is). Migraine, on the other hand, is often triggered by a sensory overload. Someone who is sensitive to light gets triggered on a sunny day, someone who is sensitive to sound gets triggered at a rock concert, and someone who is sensitive to motion gets triggered by a sudden change of velocity (commonly the sudden stop that occurs when you fall and hit the ground).

This neurologist told me (though I think there is still some dispute in the field over the exact mechanisms of migraine) that all of your sensory inputs run through your thalamus. He told me to think of the thalamus as a series of gain switches--one for each sensory input signal. Your brain has the ability to adjust the intensity of each signal before it reaches the cerebral cortex. If you are old and some of your sensory organs are deteriorating, for example, your brain can turn the volume up. What happens in migraine is that some of these inputs have the gain switch turned up high and stuck there.

He told me that this can sometimes slowly correct itself over time or with PT, but people like me often require medication. There are a number of different medications used to prevent migraine. All were developed for other conditions, and they all mess nerve signal transmission in some way. The meds, he told me, somehow disrupt things, allowing those gain switches to be reset. This, in turn, raises the threshold for causing a new migraine episode and also makes your fail life more tolerable.

I found it super interesting when someone posted that this symptom improved for them after correcting a hormone deficiency, as changes in hormone levels is one of the main things that can cause migraine levels to wax and wain.

That’s great points thanks. I think for a lot of us when incidents happen we don’t really know how to react or move forward because we have busy lives, responsibilities, school, jobs, etc.

So when something happens we need to know if it’s something we should push through or if it’s something that could be damaging and we should seek medical attention and time off work/school/social life.

So I know for me at least, stuff happens, I’ll slip on icy steps or something and it causes symptoms and my head to get violently jarred. Then my first reaction is panic because I don’t know what to do, I have work the next day or school or a date with a girl or whatever else and I just don’t know that to do, how to move forward. Do I cancel everything? Do I try and push through? Was this new damage to my brain?

That’s why it’s so helpful to get answers on forums like this or at least share my experience. Someone could say ‘yah that sounds concerning, id get checked out and see if you can get some time off’ or else ‘nah that wouldn’t be damaging, just a setback keep pushing’. Those answers help because I know what to do how to move forward and feeling like I have a plan instead of being unsure if I’m doing the right thing.

It sucks that we have to be babied like this but it’s reality. And for those saying i haven’t improved you should see what I used to worry about vs what I worry about now. It’s drastically more intense stuff. When I get confirmation that something isn’t damaging for example, the next time that thing happens I know what to do and I don’t worry about it, at least not nearly as much.

Too many think they must react to these movements. They look for symptoms. If you look for symptoms, you will find them, even if your mind is just making them up.

The concept of sensory migraines is real. Vestibular migraines.Ocular migraines. Olfactory migraines (smell)

Migraines are not always painful. They can be like a seizure or just change in processing.

So how should we react to these incidents ? Move on with normal life regardless? What if we still get symptoms how should we react to the symptoms?

For example from my incident a couple nights ago slipping on icy steps

@BurritoWarrior

What your neurologist said is very interesting. I actually fell on ice, bottom first, some time ago, and then started feeling concussion symptoms (but which were much worse and which have lasted for much longer than the ones I felt from my first concussion).

I am still not sure if these health issues/symptoms were caused by 1. an actual concussion (which seems unlikely after having read your post), 2. neck/spine trauma that might have occurred when I hit the ground, perhaps reducing blood flow to my brain, which might trigger similar effects to a concussion 3. a migraine, as you describe, although I think that it is unlikely that a migraine would be the sole cause as my symptoms were more severe and long-lasting (to this day) than I would expect a migraine to be capable of triggering. The cause could also be of course some combination of the above or something else entirely.

I also suffer from sensitivity to relatively small or minor movements/contacts. I am thinking that migraines might be part of the problem. Do you mind if I ask you the name of the first neurologist that you saw?