I suffered a concussion a year ago. 97% of the time I'm fine, but I can reawaken the symptoms rather easily. Saturday I jokily headbanged a couple of times while watching a band and got sort of headachy and dizzy immediately afterwards. After going home and resting for a bit, I felt fine, but I've been a bit woozy today (Monday) -- sort of in a fog. No headache, per se, but a very subtle feeling of pressure?

The band I sing for just got a chance to play at one of the bigger small clubs in town tonight. Am I risking making things worse if I play? If so, do you think I could permanently hurt myself or just potentially prolong the decompensation? They tell people with concussions to avoid loud music, but I'm not sure if that's because it delays healing or just because it can aggravate symptoms in the short term.

if it makes it worse then? I think you have your answer, if I shake my head I pay for it , love music but best to tap your feet, or some kind of heavy metal hand jive :

Hah. Yeah, fortunately I don't actually play metal, so I can get by with just a full-body rock-out motion that doesn't put too much torque on the noggin.

How long do you usually spend paying for it? I'm worried that I messed myself up again.

Also, the show was canceled anyway.

its kind of like my brains banging around in my head a bump in the road, can set it off, just make,s my symptoms worse, back to normal level of feeling crap after about an hour , your probably feeling better by now, it really does depend on each person and the extent , and area of damage , try not to focus to much on the foggy thing sorry the show was canceled , do things you like to do

As vini said, if it makes it worse, don't do it.

There is an old line about the guy who goes to the doctor and says, When I do this, it hurts. The doctor replies, Then stop doing that.

You are a better critic than outsiders. If it makes you feel bad, don't do it.

I would be even more concerned with the double whammy effect of the high sound volume and physical motion. The sound creates an electro-chemical (processing the sound) and physical stress (high amplitude, all frequency vibration). The physical motion causes a physical (high amplitude very low frequency vibration) and chemical ( blood flow abnormalities, high blood pressure, high adrenaline levels ) stress. Add them all together and your brain is being stressed in every way possible.

I would not be surprised if there is a cumulative effect that adds to your previous injury residuals.

From my experience, I know to stay away from such events, even when I think I can tolerate them.

In ancient days, when I was a youngster, music rhythms usually matched the natural rhythms of the human body. Music was pleasant to listen to. The rhythms matched natural noises.
Modern music seems to be designed to work against normal body actions, with actually harmful sound levels.
This is the choice of modern youth and I would say nothing to go against that. However, deafness induced by all this cannot be a good idea

As jackie said, today's music often conflicts with normal body rhythms. This causes physiological stimulations that produce the effects sought. These norepinephrine, epinephrine and other hormone responses cause the body to undergo many changes. Some of short duration, others of longer durations. Either way, they act as stressors. Physiological Stress is counterproductive to brain health and healing.

This does not consider the damage done to hearing.

Forget aggravating concussions; there’s some concern that head banging can cause them.

As for loud music, I have to admit that I sometimes use it to get through hectic places. My diffuse axonal injury makes it impossible for me to filter sounds. I’d never make it through an over-stimulating, noisy grocery store without the tunes coming out of the ear buds of my MP3 player blocking out everything else. Yes, it aggravates my headache, but that beats standing in the dairy aisle frozen in a trance. (At first people just think you're the world's laziest product demonstrator, but after a while they haul you off to the nut house.)Coping with a TBI is so much about adapting and accommodating.

By the way, is anyone else here wrestling a diffuse axonal injury?

Hockey,

Rather than wearing out your ear drums in preparation for early deafness, try my system. I have foam ear plugs that knock off about 30 dB of sound. It cuts the background noise to an acceptable level.

The ones that work best in my experience are the yellow cylinder shaped plugs. To insert them, roll and twist them with your fingers. Then put them in and they will expand to close off the ear canal. They can be washed and reused by washing them in very hot water. Buy them in the bulk packs or box.

Your 'filtering' problem is more likely an occipital lobe injury, especially as it feeds information to the corpus colosum.

My occipital lobe processes information at about 25% of the normal power. This bottleneck is a big part of the problem with auditory over stimulation.

If it brings back the symptons its not worth it.

Maybe you could perform with ear plugs as suggested. If you still can't tolerate the noise I would recommend giving it a break for a while.

8 years on and I can't handle noise - though I did make a decision and see the Who perform about 2 months ago. I wore my ear plugs for a while but you couldn't hear the words, so took them out and just thought I would enjoy my once in a life time opportunity and suffer for it later.

Good luck

Lynlee