So What is a Concussion Anyway?

This is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for. You’ve invested blood, sweat, and tears to get here, and you’re excitement level is so high that you can hardly stand it. Your heart is racing. Your palms are sweaty. It’s the championship basketball game, your team is down by one point, there are three seconds left on the clock, and you’ve got the ball. You go for the shot, and just when the ball is leaving your fingertips, you get blindsided. An elbow hit to the head. You collapse, your mind goes blank, and the world around you fades to black. The clock runs out, the final buzzer sounds, and the other team runs onto the court to claim their trophy.

Your team, disappointed by the loss, begins to wonder why you’re being so quiet, confused, and why you can’t seem to remember anything.
They think, “It’s probably just a concussion.”

No big deal, right?

Wrong. 

Each concussive event disrupts the way the brain normally functions, and each consecutive concussion induces more damage than the previous one. In fact, repeated concussive events can  leave you more likely to develop depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer’s Disease.

So what happens to your brain after a concussion anyway?

• For starters, your brain gets overstimulated:
  • Your brain will get “too excited”
    • Right after impact, your brain’s environment will get disrupted. Positive neurotransmitters, such as glutamate, will randomly be released into the synapse inducing the firing of action potentials.

    • 

      As a result, your brain will send way too many signals.

      • In addition to the influx of glutamate, your ion channels also get disrupted. Functional ion channels are necessary all over your body.
      • Ion channels are responsible for keeping ion concentrations at optimal levels.
        • For instance, if you have too many positive ions flowing into the cell, as is the case after a concussion, your brain becomes more likely to fire signals.
      • If too many signals are getting fired, your brain becomes unable to focus on the important signals and block out the unnecessary ones. Soon your brain becomes so overwhelmed that it can’t even think straight.

• Next, your brain will try to restore it’s “normal” environment
  • This restoration isn’t cheap, and it will require currency in the form of energy, particularly ATP. This ATP is necessary to power the pumps that will put the ions back where they belong.
  • In order to produce enough ATP to power the pumps, the brain goes into a metabolic crisis by recruiting all of the stored energy available.

• The brain soon can’t keep up with the energy demand, and the ugly sides of the concussion start to take place.
  • Using all of this energy will lead to the production of lactic acid.
  • Before long the mitochondria, which produces ATP, will start to dysfunction.
  • Soon, the mitochondria will no longer be able to produce the ATP needed to restore the brain’s proper environment, or enough ATP for it to perform its regular functions. The result? The neurons start to die.

And there you have it, concussions can actually lead to the death of the cells that make your brain function properly.

So what can be done? 

1. Abolish the “it’s just a concussion” mindset.
   • Concussions are serious events that lead to serious consequences. In fact, in some situations if the individual is to experience a second concussive event before their brain is completely healed from the first one, they may experience something known as “second impact syndrome”, an often fatal incidence of brain swelling.

2. Concussions are a treatable injury

• This  source lists a variety of ways in which you can protect yourself and your loved ones from getting a concussion.
• https://www.brainline.org/article/preventing-concussion

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155411/