Latest / Understanding Your Concussion / Episode 3: A Concussion Is a Functional Injury
Transcript
- Jana: There's something I want you to understand about your concussion. A concussion is a functional injury to the brain. Let's talk about it. personally don't think that we take concussions as an injury seriously enough. There are so many times that patients or clients have said to me, I was just told it was a mild concussion and you it should be fine. If you your leg, you get the support and guidance that you require to navigate that injury. But ⁓ when have an injury to our brain, ⁓ which what a concussion is, we don't that guidance and support. Thank you for joining me in understanding your concussion. hope that you are leaving this episode feeling empowered in what is going on behind the scenes of your injury, why you feel the way you feel, and how to begin to take action to move forward in your unique healing journey. Interested in checking out understanding your concussion course? Head to concussion healingspace.com or the link is in the show notes. maybe you sprain your ankle or your wrist, We have more guidance and support ⁓ for those injuries than currently do ⁓ for a concussion, ⁓ is why so of us get lost in the shuffle. If we were taking concussions lot more seriously and people were receiving the guidance support early on, guidance and support ⁓ Hi, I am Jana Kapp. I know the concussion journey deeply, ⁓ both personally ⁓ and professionally. Join me in understanding concussion, ⁓ where I empower you in navigating the complexities. You can purchase lesson one through four, reminder lesson one is free. you're interested in connecting with me for mentorship and support, one on one consultations are available online or join the Support Club where you get access all four courses and weekly drop in support options and early on, the research shows, ⁓ can reduce symptom severity, of a concussion recovery journey by sharing the science of what is going on behind the scenes, the stories of why we feel the way we feel, and how we can work with our brain to find our way back to feeling and functioning like ourselves again. length of recovery time, we wouldn't see so many people lost in the shuffle. I find that concussions get brushed off. ⁓ you have a concussion, you'll probably be fine. ⁓ If not, know, come back and see me or see a doctor. The conversation around concussions is changing, But there are still people in various different areas that are not getting correct information or the up-to-date information. that is now available, I know that doctors now have a ton on plate, so it's not always feasible for people to keep up with the research. However, we know now is more that we can do. if you are a healthcare and you're sure what to do, ideally you will ⁓ guide them towards a concussion provider ⁓ who is knowledgeable in that injury. Much you do for someone with a leg. let's talk more about how a concussion is an injury to your brain. brain injuries are on a spectrum. The spectrum of brain injuries can range from mild to moderate to severe brain injuries. A concussion falls under the umbrella of mild traumatic brain injury. all concussions be a traumatic brain injury, but not all mild traumatic brain injuries are ⁓ a concussion. there is a spectrum within the spectrum. the mechanism of ⁓ leads to a amount of force on the brain. you need to have certain amount of force ⁓ in order to sustain a concussion. The greater force, the greater the disruption to the brain. all us are individual and we are all different when it comes to our recoveries. But ⁓ is the degree of which we've sustained our injury is all ⁓ different and the mechanism of injury that leads to concussion is when the brain moves within the skull. hear me now. You do not need to actually hit your head in order to experience a concussion. You can hit your head in order to experience a concussion, but you can also experience whiplash. there is a force that is placed on that ⁓ body leads to your head moving forward backwards that will cause the brain to move the skull. if you think of like a jello mold, it's a little bit wobbly, ⁓ It will move. So depending on how much force you put through that jello mold, you might get a little bit of a wiggle, a little bit of a disruption. ⁓ if you really up the ante in terms of your force that jello, you will start to see ⁓ more more disruption, ⁓ maybe tears within the jello. That is essentially what's starting to happen in a concussion, the amount of force can lead to more disruption impact to the brain. a is actually more of a functional injury to the brain rather than structural injury to the brain. ⁓ When we see more structural changes to the brain, ⁓ you are now into a different umbrella of brain more moderate to severe on a CT scan. or an MRI. We cannot see changes to the brain on a CT scan or an MRI. When you sustain a concussion, brain is injured. But it's injured at the cellular level, deep within the inner workings the brain. impacts the neural pathways, ⁓ which is how information is sent and received throughout the brain. we are seeing these cellular changes ⁓ changes to the neural pathways, this what's leading to the experience of symptoms. The cellular changes is part of the neuro metabolic cascade of events. This is the inflammatory process that does happen within the brain after an injury. We see the inflammatory process happen after most injuries in any body part. you sprain your ankle, there will be an inflammatory response You will see swelling. You might see bruising. flow to the area is promoted there in order to start accelerating the healing. Same thing happens in brain, The neurometabolic cascade of events typically lasts around four to six weeks. However, I mentioned the neural pathways. The neural pathways in your brain is your inner wiring. It's what makes you, you. You have been building those neural pathways since you were born. What you learn, what you experience, how you feel, these are all things that get wired in And then you rely on these neural pathways for you to function in your daily life. the neural pathways ⁓ been disrupted, information within the brain is no longer being sent or received ⁓ a way that is efficient and effective to you. I of neural pathways like a wire, that they can get frayed, they can get stretched, or they can get torn. that's going to influence and impact the information and how information can be sent. This now becomes challenge. a concussion is a functional injury because it changes how we function. It disrupts how the brain functions and it how we function. ⁓ even though cannot see a concussion, we can feel it. ⁓ We know are not functioning ⁓ as ourselves at our best. we feel ⁓ slowed down. I remember ⁓ waiting on my brain for to come up with answer what it was that I was thinking. I couldn't really get out sentences in the same ⁓ or recall the in the same way because my neural pathways were disrupted. I was slower and I had to wait for the information to actually arrive for me to articulate. I was also not feeling very present because I wasn't processing information in real time ⁓ I often felt quite foggy and out it and I didn't really feel like I was truly present in the moment. I also noticed that my reactions during situations or towards certain situations either heightened ⁓ more than they should have been based on the scenario or quite I wasn't having any kind of reaction in the way that I thought I would typically. And I was tired ⁓ the time. I was very fatigued and very low energy. if we're not functioning like ourselves and we're not acting like ourselves and we didn't get the guidance and support that our brain needed in beginning, we're kind of at a loss, You know you're not functioning like yourself, but it's really hard to know what to do about it. I know even for myself as a healthcare professional, I had no clue in the beginning what was going on with me and why I was feeling and the way that I was. for many years didn't know I actually had a concussion. didn't have typical concussion symptoms with my first concussions. I wasn't having headaches. ⁓ I wasn't having dizziness. I that sensitive to light sound. so I figured I was okay, I wasn't. okay and that was because I didn't understand what a concussion truly was and how much really impacted ability to function. I remember early on in my journey after my second concussion I being completely out of it. I ⁓ couldn't keep up with conversations at the speed which conversation was going and also the content. I sometimes would forget ⁓ what we were talking about or ⁓ even watching a movie. you know, 20, 30 minutes in, there'd be some kind of joke connecting to something that happened in the beginning. And I had zero recollection of that and didn't understand at the time why people were laughing at this joke. It didn't make sense to me I... remember sitting in restaurants where I'd be, having a conversation with someone, but then ⁓ someone else behind would be having a conversation as well with someone else. if their voice was than the person that I was listening to, my brain could not keep focus on ⁓ the conversation I was having. I was easily distracted, and I could get to work, but when I got to work, I could do the essentials of what needed to get done, wasn't going above and beyond like I typically would I did have the capacity to do so. I was. very emotionally dysregulated. but I didn't connect the emotional dysregulation to having whiplash or hitting head. I would get up in the and through the motions of trying to get ready for work. ⁓ And then by the time I got on the bus, ⁓ I was exhausted. I remember sitting and just feeling tears rolling down my face and I kept thinking, why am I feeling like this? Why is this happening? But by the time I got into work on the bus, I just brushed off those tears, and continued to push myself I also found myself very demotivated. I had zero desire to participate in any of the things that I loved. I live in a mountain town. I specifically moved here to go skiing and I did not want to go skiing. I didn't even want to go outside, especially if it was snowing. I had the curtains closed so that I didn't have to know what was going on in the outside world. the other way that I really was not functioning like myself, was my energy levels I was so and so all the time. And yet could not sleep. I just keep trying to function like me, I wanted to be able to go to work and exercise and then hang out with my friends, work, exercise, socialize. that is how I typically ⁓ functioned in a day. And I could not keep up with that level And so I slowly stopped functioning as me and I became a shell ⁓ myself. I felt like I was just on autopilot, that I was just moving through the motions of life, doing I could of a bare minimum to try and get by, ⁓ but really was not me. I didn't recognize me and I didn't really like how I was functioning. I didn't like how I was reacting. I just did not really love who I was. I couldn't be me the way I knew me to be, And I really started to isolate hardest part was I did not understand why. Not understanding ⁓ why I was functioning the way I was functioning or why I was feeling the way was feeling made it challenging to keep showing up. And it really took years to connect what was going on behind scenes. to Why I was reacting that way. the way I found out about my concussion is twofold. I intellectually knew I had a but I really didn't know what that meant or why I was feeling that way what to do about it. around 2014, were starting to become popular. in mainstream media and the healthcare world, thanks to Sydney Crosby, awesome Canadian hockey player who one the first professional players really in any sport to be at the top of their game, sustain a concussion and stop playing, not push through, to recognize that this was not okay to push through. the conversation around concussion really started to shift, which meant that healthcare professionals starting to navigate more of an understanding of what a concussion was and why people were functioning the way they were. there was a held close to where I live. The only thing I really remember from that whole experience was sitting there in the audience thinking, my God, they're talking about me. Then I drive back up the highway, go to work, and I start sharing ⁓ with patient what I had learned in the conference we were starting to put the pieces together, there so much overlap between the of us. and they had a concussion. that that's how I was able to determine that I had sustained a concussion my is not unique. There are ⁓ many us in a similar boat in that either we had no clue or we told that we had a concussion, ⁓ much like talked about in the beginning, it wasn't taken seriously enough. ⁓ And so we did what we told to do ⁓ and just kind of kept waiting our brain to snap out of it, of which it didn't. So you fall into one of those categories or a different category I didn't mention in terms of not knowing that you have this injury, first of all, it is not ⁓ fault. Now you can start to know that there are reasons behind why you are feeling and functioning the way that you are. Or there is a reason why you're experiencing the symptom that you are. there are for you to discover and explore. what is going on with you and why you feel the way you feel. that you can find your way to feeling and functioning like yourself again. you can find your way to feeling and functioning like yourself again. If you are not feeling and functioning like yourself and you know you've sustained a concussion or suspect that you have sustained a concussion. Please know that you can move forward in this journey, empower yourself to understand more about what is going on specifically for you and your journey, because we're all individuals, you can start to out why you feel the way you feel, why you're functioning the way you're functioning, why you're experiencing the symptoms that you're so that you can find your way to figuring out you can start to change it. you don't have to keep functioning the way that you're functioning. You can help your brain to repair, rebuild or create new neural pathways the act of neuroplasticity. to support your brain in healing.