It Boils Down to Your Noodle (Disclaimer: Not Pasta Noodles) – Acupuncture and Concussions

As the weather begins to warm up, more people are heading outside. Whether it be for walks, bike rides, backyard shenanigans, and sporting events, everyone is starting to move. This also includes everything speeding up, no need to worry about slipping and sliding on ice, so why not pick up the pace and put the pedal to the metal?

This is where our brain comes in. It loves excitement, it likes going fast in vehicles with the windows down, it likes the rush of adrenaline your body receives when you go in for a tackle, but you know what it doesn’t like? Concussions.

Concussion? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Concussions are a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) which can occur from motor vehicle accidents, sports injuries and falls. Common symptoms include:

Headaches
Dizziness
feeling out of it
feeling nausea
poor memory
irritability
being more emotional than usual
hypersensitivity to light and noise
poor concentration
troubles sleeping and balance issues (to name a “few”).

Concussions can take a long time to heal from, depending on how well you are able to look after your noodle. Sleep is important, staying away from physical activity is crucial, and limiting screen time and “heavy “thinking is a must. Any of these can cause your symptoms to worsen and set you back to square one and symptoms may last for months if not taken care of properly. Then we start to get into the post-concussion syndrome issues and that’s a whole other ball game that no one wants to play in (debilitating pain, tremors, insomnia, memory loss).

So how can Acupuncture help?

We already know (hopefully) that acupuncture can be effective in the treatment of nausea, dizziness, headaches, poor memory, changing emotions, sleep difficulties and balance issues, so why would we view the potential helpfulness in the treatment of these similar concussion symptoms any differently?

A usual treatment geared toward concussions may include some scalp acupuncture points along the cranial sutures and scars with electrical stimulation and works wonders to reduce physical stress and increase blood flow.

How can I help myself?

REST
- We need to sleep at night for a reason, sleep is the brain healing and recharging
AVOID STRENUOUS PHYSICAL AND MENTAL EXERTIONS
- Would you run a marathon on a broken ankle? See my point?
STAY AWAY FROM CONTACT SPORTS/ACTIVITIES
- Your brain is already hurting, don’t risk more harm to it. You only have one.
SLOWLY RE-INTRODUCE YOUR ACTIVITIES
- Same principle as “I used to be able to eat a full pizza, now I can only eat two slices”. Slowly add slices.
WATCH WHAT YOU PUT IN YOU BODY
- Alcohol, drugs and caffeine may elongate your healing time.
DO ONE THING AT A TIME
- Your poor brain is barely handling that.
GO GET SOME ACUPUNCTURE
- I’m not too sure, but I think this post was about how acupuncture can help with this kind of stuff?