Concussions are not just a result of head trauma but can occur from rapid head movement, such as in car accidents or sports. Symptoms often mimic a hangover, with sensitivity to light and sound, irritability, fatigue, and headaches being common indicators. Recognizing these signs early, especially in children, is crucial to prevent long-term complications like memory loss or emotional health challenges.

Effective recovery involves rest, gradual reintroduction of activities, and professional care to address metabolic imbalances in the brain. Treatments like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, dietary adjustments, and reduced screen time can significantly speed up recovery. Left untreated, concussions can lead to severe, lasting impacts, emphasizing the importance of proper diagnosis and care from a specialist.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:06 – Introduction to Concussions

01:17 – Causes of Concussions

02:23 – Symptoms of Concussions

03:46 – Recognizing Concussions in Children

04:46 – Importance of Professional Care

05:06 – Return-to-Play Protocol

08:58 – Risks of Untreated Concussions

10:32 – Advanced Treatment Options

11:46 – Why Proper Diagnosis Matters

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:06] All right. So concussions, you know, as the as Texas froze over, it was one of those things I thought this is definitely something we should start talking about again. So a couple of things on concussion. First of all, it’s not a bruise in the brain, bruise in the brain for like a hemorrhagic stroke. The bruises when a blood vessel breaks and a broken blood vessel is not the same thing as a concussion. However, concussions are when you basically have metabolic breakdowns of the brain functioning the way it’s supposed to has inflammation and it’s just not operating properly. If you’re good at it I, I mean I to treated after had lots of concussions you can see it you can I’ve had people walk in and I look at them and like do you have a concussion. You can talk it the way the eyes focus and glaze over and it’s just it’s not that hard to tell. Once you’re used to looking at concussions. So couple of really important pieces, you don’t have to hit your head. That is not a thing because hitting your head actually doesn’t have much to do with getting a concussion. Hitting the brain on the skull is exactly is the way that you get a concussion.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:17] So, you know, if you fall down, your head flips back and forth really quickly. We see this in female athletes all the time in soccer and basketball and stuff like that because they have a thin neck or if you slip on the ice and you, you know, move your head real quickly, you know, or you get in a car wreck, you don’t hit your head on anything, but your head whips around real fast. That’s the easiest way to get concussions. So the. If you if you’re wondering if you’ve got one. The easiest way to tell this isn’t the only way to tell. But the easiest way to tell is if you feel like you’re hung over and you hadn’t drank anything the night before. The way you feel with a hangover and the way you feel the concussion are very similar. You’re sensitive. Like you’re sensitive to sound, you’re irritable, you’re tired. Everything in your body kind of feels just minor. You might feel slightly nauseous, you know, that type of thing. And you just want to go back to bed like that. That basically, you know, those two things line up pretty evenly. So they’re not perfect. But if you’ve ever had a hangover and you work, you fall down or get in a car wreck or something.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:23] And a couple hours later, the next day, you feel like you’ve got a yo hangover. Chances are you got a concussion, especially specifically if you didn’t drink anything. That’s typically the easiest way to tell. So for those of you, like I said, who have never had a hangover. Or your kids or something like that, it’s sensitivity, light. People are more irritable thinking, I can’t like hangry, you know, where they’re irrationally or out of normal irritate. You know, if your kids are normally irritable and then they get super irritable. This is one of those things to kind of think about after that. And usually this precedes an event, a big, big fall, you know, a hit in a sports game, a car wreck, something like that. They’re not going to be totally normal. Have nothing happened to them. Wake up the next day with a concussion. That’s not really how it works. So if you guys are noticing that you or your kids after some type of trauma, a fall, a car wreck or anything, are more irritable, more sensitive, light, more sensitive to sound, Those are pretty solid indications. Headaches are a good one. Not always there, but generally. So if you guys have those. So the way that you treat these first of all, if you’ve got these issues 100% and you go see somebody who’s trained in this, this is not something you mess with yourself. If you have a concussion, your brain’s messed up.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:46] So even if you know what you’re doing, it’s always a good idea to get secondary eyes on it because your brain is the thing that’s messed up. So, you know, and rely on your brain to fix your ear if it’s messed up. So go see somebody. We we the way that we work on it. And we’ve had really good success with this. We get people better a lot faster than there’s normal. You have to understand, like I said, it’s a metabolic process. So you want to fix the things in the metabolic function in the brain, not fighting folic acid. Omega three fatty acids. Koku ten. And. Excuse me. Koku ten is a great one. Nancy is a pretty solid one. Lots of water, lots of fat. Strip the sugar out of the diet. And then I like to suffer liver and kidneys to decrease inflammation systemically so that we pull out all that and get him in bed. So the return to play protocol on this is actually really, really got. So, you know day one you got a concussion dark room until light doesn’t bother your eyes like a typical hours it could be a couple of days just depends on you and the concussion. You know once you can start dealing with with light again, going to go through the day, normal function, stay off all devices, all, you know, iPads and cell phones and stuff like that.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:06] The frame rate refresh rate of your cell phone and your video games and things like that is so high that can give you eyestrain and your eyes or brain tissue. And so you can have issues with the brain again. So stand for devices as much as you can. If you’re going to read, make sure there’s plenty of, you know, good light, but try to just relax and not do anything. Let your brain kind of regenerate and heal. Walking around once you, if you don’t have any stability issues isn’t a bad option. Just keep it short because you’re sending giant amounts of information to the brain while you walk around. So, you know, don’t decide to even go out for a five mile walk with a concussion and not making it worse that it’ll it’ll fatigue you and deplete you quickly. So hyperbaric oxygen is my favorite thing to add to this because your brain has a giant need for oxygen. And when it’s damaged or it’s depleted or when it’s trying to struggle through something, giving it more oxygen is always beneficial to the scenario. So any any oxidative stress issues, any, you know, free radical issues. And inflammatory issues. Oxygen is going to help tremendously with all of those things. So getting the oxygen levels higher is really, really great.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:20] So hyperextension. Phenomenal results with concussions and all sports injuries, but specifically with concussions. So jump in there. Now, like I said, the return to play protocol is pretty solid. So first day, you know, first couple of days stay in the dark until your eyes can deal with light. Once they can deal with light, you don’t move around as soon as you can get out and move around and that you’re not extra fatigued at the end of that day. You know, you can go back to work or school for a third to a half the day and people all the time. I think it’s about a third of the day. No, I’m good. I’ll stay the rest of the day. Bad idea, because what ends up happening is that, you know, a third or a half the day, you’re like, All right, that was good. I could deal with that in the second half, just completely depletes you and wipes you out. And that’s problematic because it’s going to keep you from where you need to go. So if you do a half day, come home and you’re good, you know, go back and do, you know, three quarters or a whole day, once you can do that, you’re you’re back to kind of normal. You know, you’re a little bit fatigued after that, but not substantially. Once you’re good with that, then you can go back to practice. I want you to go back to practice. You do about 25 to 30% intensity, you know, ride a bike, walk around the, you know, sidelines. It’s going to be there with your team once. That’s fine. That’s not giving you you’re not extra tired.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:39] Then you hear a 50%, 75% back, 200%. This can take a week. This four days is it can take three weeks, six months. It just kind of patterns. Now when you get with somebody who knows what they’re doing, this is the biggest, biggest thing. And it’s not forever. It’s for a short period of time while you’re getting checked out and, you know, moving through it. So you should probably see this person once or twice a week, depending on the severity of the concussion as you’re going through it now, getting adjusted by somebody again, who knows what they’re doing. Concussions is a really, really good option because what ends up happening with almost every concussion is the musculature from about mid chest up starts locking down and tightening down. So what ends up happening with that is that it blocks off, lymphatics, it blocks off, you know, it decreases, you know, oxygen in and out of the brain. The tension kind of builds up. It creates other pressure on nerves and it just hurts. We end up with sinus headaches and things like that from it. So when you’re getting adjusted on this, when you don’t want to whip the head around. So there’s a technique in that the neuro that you guys learn, which is just a straight PDA adjustment. So it’s back to front and it doesn’t rotate or jostle the head very much. And that is fantastic.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:58] That helps tremendously because it really relaxes the musculature in the neck. That’s everything, the head drain. And so we have the secondary tension. Sinus stuff calms down. I’ve had people with concussions tell me that their teeth hurt because the silence pressure got on their teeth. And so you’re getting adjusted a couple times a week by again, find it, find a neuro chiro or someone who’s really good with concussions. They should be able to get you adjusted now. And so so that’s kind of where a lot of this concussion stuff lives. It is extremely big deal. I don’t blow this one off, especially if your kids get concussions. Second impact syndrome is really, really bad. So that’s where you have a concussion. You didn’t take the time to kind of let it. He’ll get back together and you got a concussion on top of your concussion. We’ve seen massive memory issues with this. We’ve seen this bleed to death. It’s been it’s bad, bad. And we talk about long term traumatic injuries causing. Psychopathology or emotional and mental issues down the road is legit. And so once you get these things, getting them cleaned up, getting them taking care of properly is really, really big deal. We’re starting to play around with taking guys who’ve had multiple concussions and it’s starting to affect their life and walking them back through psychedelic protocols for PTSD. Getting all the neurotransmitters to reset and then doing physical movements to rebuild and reshape kind of what’s going on brain wise. So those have been promising and those have been pretty solid.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:32] However. You’re not getting a concussion and then obviously treating it really, really well when you have it is obviously the best option. So if you guys have a fall, if you guys have a car wreck, if you guys any of that type of stuff where your head whips around real hard involuntarily, there’s a chance you get a concussion from that. Like I said, you don’t have to hit your head, but get in with somebody who knows what they’re doing. Get it checked out. Cause it’s it’s one of those things where you don’t want to leave. You know? You don’t want to leave things to fester when it comes to your heart or your brain because they always come back to bite you later, like the scar that’s on your leg. No big deal, right? I got it. I got a scar on my back from more. They cut it, cut into me to put the titanium rod on the link to my left femur, you know? Great. Fantastic. You know, I’ve got some blood vessel damage from, you know, the lower leg from that surgery. It’s fine. It’ll be fine forever. Like, whatever. The brain of the heart issues, though, you know, those things come back to haunt you sooner or later. And usually it’s sooner. And usually it’s a loss of quality of life that you don’t really want. Not that loss of life, but the energy, the function, the, you know, comprehension. You know, that type of stuff. You start losing that, and that’s the worst thing in the world.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:46] So if you guys get a concussion, if you guys have friends who have concussions, make sure they get in with somebody who knows what they’re doing. The reason that we talked about this a little bit, E.R. docs don’t do a great job of diagnosing them for a couple different reasons. One. You’re usually in a stressed out state in your. And so everybody kind of has that, you know, bewildered, you know, look that they’ve all got little issues and in the year making sure you’re not going to die right now. So if you’re not going to die from your concussion, they’re going to like go see your primary care. Because here neurologists go see somebody else and have them deal with it. So just because you got in a car wreck or you had a fall or whatever and the doc did not diagnosed with the concussion does not mean you don’t have one. So E.R. is probably the worst place to try to diagnose a concussion because of everything. The stress, something else is going on. It’s pretty easy when they get to my office. So if you guys had these falls, if you have any symptoms, you think you might have one, get in with somebody who knows what to look for because you don’t you want to treat these things properly because if you don’t treated properly, you can create issues for yourself long term. So there’s guys any questions of questions of trauma swanscombe or drop in in the comments? Thanks for your time.

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