Concussions are a mild traumatic brian injury (MTBI) that are relatively common injuries sustained during sports, or other other unforeseen accidents. The symptoms usually consist of headaches, dizziness or disorientation, brain fog and fatigue. They can range from mild to severe, with or without loss of consciousness at the time of injury.
To understand what happens as a result of a head injury or concussion, it’s helpful to picture the four factors of inflammation: Redness, heat, swelling and pain. Now let’s imagine those factors in a slightly different example.
Imagine you were using a hammer to pound some nails into the wall and you slipped and smacked your thumb with the hammer. OUCH! As a result of the injury, your thumb will now develop all of the four factors of inflammation. It will become red and swollen, hot and painful. In cases of concussion, that process is identical, except it is occurring inside of the skull – the brain itself becomes inflamed. A concussion and all of the symptoms from it should resolve on its own within about 10 to 14 days. Most of the time, people experience complete resolution without any lingering issues. We run into problems however, when symptoms persist long after that two week window.
If the concussion does not resolve on its own with time and rest, we can find ourselves in a situation of chronic inflammation and dysfunction that can go on indefinitely. A lot of these individuals seek medical help and are prescribed drugs for management, but those type of medication’s will never truly resolve the underlying problem. What’s needed is a targeted therapy to get to the heart of the issue.
At Hershey family chiropractic, we understand the physiology behind concussions and the inflammatory process that happens in the brain. We utilize a very specific functional medicine protocol designed to reverse engineer the inflammatory process and bring it to a resolution. We couple that with neuromodulation therapies that can reduce and eliminate the other neurological symptoms including pain, headache and dizziness. Depending on the severity of the injury, this process can take anywhere from 2 to 6 months, but it is typically painless and relatively simple.
If you know someone who is struggling with the effect of post concussion syndrome and has yet to find relief, please call our office at 717-531-3411 to schedule your concussion consultation.
