Decline from Minor Brain Injuries
In today’s blog, I will be going over an article titled, “Brain Behavior and Immunity”. It was published in February 2017 and basically we’re talking about the brain-gut axis and how they play on each other. The article details how annually, millions of individuals with traumatic brain injuries represent the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide in individuals under age 45. In addition to the acute symptoms following neuro-traumatic events, there’s increased evidence that long term biological consequences may increase the risk of neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression (I would even throw in their anxiety, bipolar, and schizophrenia) later in life. It may also contribute in part to the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disease.
I have a lot of patients coming in that are showing signs of neurodegeneration. Whether they’re Parkinson’s, MS, dementia, Alzheimer’s paired neurology, they don’t realize that injuries that they may have had either from repetitive sports injuries or a couple car accidents (maybe nothing significant but enough to) creates this imbalance here. Over a time frame, it could be something as simple as that you hit your head and you saw stars. It really depends upon the adaptability of the person when they get into the injury as to what the outcome will be. Will they get major consequences and create a rapid decline in their brain and show up as neural degeneration in the next two to five years to recover? Or might they not get any better from that injury? The answer is, yes! It’s always about the current state of adaptability!
When you’re coming to me and you’re asking me for help with whatever condition (I don’t care whether it’s a chronic patient, chronic neck pain, back pain, discs herniations), we must always consider the brain! Not only does the brain create these direct brain symptoms (in this case gastrointestinal issues and other issues), it also creates tight muscles in my neck, my back, my hips, and my knees which will lead to statements like, “I need knee replacements”, “I need a hip replacements”, or “back surgery” or “neck surgery” and all of the other neural degeneration patients.
We need to realize this: I know that you go in and they tell you, “oh, you have Parkinson’s and here’s the drug and try it.” Maybe the drug works and maybe the drug doesn’t. Either way, the drug is not required for health. If it helps manage the symptom, you may use it for a little while but sometimes side effects are terrible on a long term basis. It will speed the degeneration no doubt in every single person because drugs are not required for health! Every time we take one pill for anything, we’re adding more to our allostatic stress load, driving our health down.
When you look at the outcomes of some of these patients (a Parkinson’s patient for example) and they say 5 to 8 years from diagnosis to death, in my opinion, I would say to myself, “why would I even go there if that’s the outcome that they’re getting?”. Try something new! Try going and looking for someone like our office here that’s giving proper assessments, trying to figure out why and what are the root functional causes, and why the brain is breaking down. Set up a plan of action to address those causes and give yourself a chance you deserve! Don’t accept rapid degeneration and continued use of drugs, which only speeds up the degeneration, absolutely lowers your health, and moves you closer to death on a long term basis. Again, they are not required for health. You may decide to use them to help manage a symptom but you should always be looking for root functional causes specific to you.
As always, any questions, let me know. Thanks and have a great day.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159117301551