Head Injury. Part 2. Diet, and a vital test for a head injury/concussion.
If your doctor tells you the only thing to do after a concussion is to rest, then read this.
Due to its length, I have divided this post into three parts. I encourage you to copy and paste or bookmark it for later use.
Part One is here
The problem is that your allopathic doctor will tell you that rest is all you need. They say this because they are unaware of how targeted nutrients can help with brain inflammation.
Your diet plays a role in how severely the head injury can impact you long-term. The standard American inflammatory diet does not do much to accelerate neuronal healing and cognitive recovery.
Incorporating the right foods can speed up the recovery process.
The Test to Ask For When You Have Sustained a Head Injury
A CT scan can reveal whether a head injury has caused bleeding in the brain but not whether brain cells themselves have been injured — the primary cause of many TBI symptoms.
Researchers have discovered that a blood test measuring levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) can gauge the severity of a patient’s TBI and predict how well he or she will recover, helping pinpoint which patients need further specialized treatment.
A new blood test could help emergency room doctors quickly diagnose traumatic brain injury and determine its severity. The findings, published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, could help identify patients who might benefit from extra therapy or experimental treatments.
“Compared to other proteins that have been measured in traumatic brain injury, BDNF does a much better job of predicting outcomes,” says Frederick Korley, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and first author of the new paper.
CT scans can only detect brain bleeding, not brain cell damage, which can happen without bleeding.
Korley and collaborators around the country wanted to know if a blood test could better predict which patients would have ongoing brain injury-related problems, to provide better treatment for them.
So they measured the levels of three proteins that they suspected play a role in brain cell activity in more than 300 patients with a TBI and 150 patients without brain injuries.
Then, they followed those with a TBI for the next six months.
Levels of one protein, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), taken within 24 hours of someone’s head injury, could predict the severity of a TBI and how a patient would fare, they found.
While healthy people averaged 60 nanograms per milliliter of BDNF in their bloodstreams, patients with brain injuries had less than one-third of that amount, averaging less than 20 nanograms per milliliter, and those with the most severe TBIs had even lower levels, around 4 nanograms per milliliter.
Moreover, patients with high levels of BDNF mostly recovered from their injuries six months later. However, in patients with the lowest levels of BDNF, symptoms still lingered at follow-up.
“The advantage of being able to predict prognosis early on is that you can advise patients on what to do, recommend whether they need to take time off work or school and decide whether they need to follow up with a rehab doctor or neurologist,” Korley says.
If you click the link above, you will see that the BDNF blood test information is from 2015. Are emergency departments running this test?
Based on my personal and professional experience with head trauma, I do not know of anyone who had a TBI and had this test completed.
This means you need to know about the test and demand it!
Dietary Support for Concussion Recovery: Follow these guidelines for three months (or adjust based on your recovery process, as some people may require a longer recovery time)
Include
Ketogenic diet: This diet is high in healthy fats, moderate protein, and low in carbohydrates. Do not follow the keto diet if you have kidney disease, one kidney, have had your gallbladder removed, or have gallbladder dysfunction. Follow the diet for 3 months. Do not follow a ketogenic diet long-term. (If you are a vegetarian or vegan, it still may be wise to modify your diet as your brain heals) (Engle, 2017).
Healthy fats for brain support include avocado, wild-caught Alaskan salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines (plan to post on sardines and determine if they are as healthy as we think), cooking with duck fat or grass-fed butter, coconut, raw nuts, and seeds, grass-fed/organic meats, and dairy (Engle, 2017).
Add Choline-rich foods since choline is a brain nutrient that plays a role in memory and thinking. The richest choline food sources include beef, egg yolks, chicken breast, fish, shitake mushrooms, potatoes, beans, milk, yogurt, cruciferous vegetables, and sunflower seeds.
Blueberries can provide a brain boost, strengthen short-term memory, and improve reaction times, all affected by a head injury.
Include vitamin C-rich foods like tomatoes, peppers, kiwi, citrus, strawberries, cantaloupe, and broccoli. Vitamin C may stabilize the blood-brain barrier and reduce swelling.
Avoid these foods to prevent further inflammation
Refined oils include safflower, vegetable, canola, corn, and soybean oil.
Sugar. Sugar from fruit is safe, but avoid added sugar.
Processed foods. Keep the diet full of whole foods with limited additives, colorings, dyes, and other unknown non-food ingredients.
Omit ALL artificial sweeteners from the diet. Read labels—you would be surprised to find them in protein powders, protein bars, flavored waters, low-calorie foods, etc. Watch Sweet Misery to understand the neurological impact of aspartame. Other fake sugars include acesulfame K (ace K, ACK), sucralose, Splenda, and NutraSweet, the most common label names.
Part 3. Supplement Protocol for Concussions will be posted next week.
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This is NOT information allopathic practitioners will share with you.
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Additional Sources
Engle, D. (2017) The concussion repair manual. A practical guide to recovering from traumatic brain injuries. Full Spectrum Medicine.
Gaby, A. (2006) The Natural Pharmacy. Revised and Updated. 3rd Edition. Three Rivers Press.
Keatley, MA & Whittemore, L. (2010) Understanding mild traumatic brain injury. Brain Injury Hope Foundation.