In clinical terms, it’s clear that TBI causes excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, edema, neuroinflammation, and cell death. Addressing the primary injury is insufficient, as the secondary injury cascade causes considerable damage. Vitamins, minerals, and nutrients may supplement other TBI therapies, and a team of researchers from Southern Illinois University explored this possibility comprehensively in a review article published in the June 2016 issue of Brain Research. The study authors noted the following 4 findings on how vitamins and nutraceuticals could help treat TBI:
1. Nicotinamide’s ability to support energy production, inhibit cellular processes that delay repair, and decrease free radical scavenging appears to be neuroprotective.
2. Magnesium seems to decrease excitotoxicity.
3. Flavonoids have strong antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and growth factor-stimulating properties.
4. Omega-3 fatty acids affect several points (including inflammatory signaling and cellular plasticity) in the secondary injury cascade.
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The NFL Players Association should promote the use of CBD
Did you know that the US Government holds a patent on Cannabinoids, which includes CBD, as neuroprotectants and antioxidants?
“Cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults such as stroke or trauma, or in the treatment of neuroprotectants such as Alzheimer’s Disease.”– United States Patent – 6630507
There may be a preventive solution for neurological conditions like TBI and CTE that exist in Cannabidiol, better known as CBD, a compound found in abundance in the Hemp plant marijuana. CBD is non-psychoactive (doesn’t get you high), non-toxic, non-addictive and has already been proven to stimulate the human endocannabinoid system, which regulates a variety of physiological processes including pain-sensation, mood, and memory. So, now that the NFLPA has been armed with this information, they need to advocate for its immediate use – particularly right after football games where 1,600 players have just sustained numerous “ischemic insults” and traumatic injuries to the brain.
Concussions in Children May Be Vastly Underreported, Study Finds
Children who have suffered a concussion are more likely to be diagnosed in their pediatrician’s office than the emergency room, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics. The study suggests current concussion statistics may be vastly underreported, since only children diagnosed in the ER are included in counts by the U.S. CDC. They found approximately 82 percent had their first concussion visit at a primary care site like a pediatrician’s office, 12 percent were diagnosed in an emergency department, 5 percent were diagnosed from a specialist, such as a sports medicine doctor or neurologist, and 1 percent were directly admitted to the hospital. Additionally, one-third of those injured were under age 12, showing that not just high school athletes are at high risk, the study found.
“We learned two really important things about pediatric concussion healthcare practices,” Kristy Arbogast, lead author and Co-Scientific Director of CHOP’s Center for Injury Research and Prevention, said in a statement today. “First, four in five of this diverse group of children were diagnosed at a primary care practice — not the emergency department. Second, one-third were under age 12, and therefore represent an important part of the concussion population that is missed by existing surveillance systems that focus on high school athletes.”
Poll: Nearly 1 In 4 Americans Reports Having Had A Concussion
Concussions have become part of the daily news. But how much have these brain injuries become part of daily life? The poll, conducted during the first half of March, found that nearly a quarter of people — 23 percent of those surveyed — said they had suffered a concussion at some point in their lives. Among those who said they’d had a concussion, more than three-quarters had sought medical treatment. As for what had led to a child’s concussion, 72 percent said it occurred in a contact sport. Eighty-four percent of households that said a child had experienced a concussion related to sports said they would allow the child to play the sport again.
The poll gathered responses from 3,009 people. The margin for error is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.
Hope for the future: athletes find alternative that could shorten concussion recovery time
A study on concussions and teenagers conducted by University at Buffalo researchers began in late 2015 and will continue through at least the end of 2016. Researchers are looking for a sample size of about 100 high school athletes. Julia Whipple’s participation began with her diagnosis of a concussion after a concussion on the soccer field. She was given a watch which would monitor her activity. She could not do any strenuous workouts but neither was she prescribed total rest. Whipple walked on a treadmill every day for 20 minutes. She walked very slowly. Her heart rate could not go above 100 beats per minute. The prevailing philosophy on concussion recovery focuses on rest – no activity until the symptoms resolve. The study is examining the idea that low-level exercise, such as walking on a treadmill, helps the brain recover better than simple rest.
“The more common risk is that the athlete would do too much exercise too soon and exacerbate symptoms,” Dr. John Leddy said. “That’s why we give them very specific instructions about what to do and how to progress the exercise. They wear a heart rate monitor. They are instructed to stop exercise that day if their symptoms increase. They can resume the next day.” While both were back playing after three weeks, individual recovery can vary. Leddy said he knows of no cases where the symptoms became worse with this approach, provided that the protocol was done correctly.
Anemia negatively affects recovery from traumatic brain injuries
Approximately half of patients hospitalized with traumatic brain injuries are anemic, according to recent studies, but anemia’s effects on the recovery of these patients is not clear. Now, researchers have found evidence that anemia can negatively influence the outcomes of patients with traumatic brain injuries. For each increase in hemoglobin of 1 gram above 7 grams per deciliter of blood, the likelihood of a good outcome increased by 33 percent.
“Now that we have shown that anemia affects a patient’s recovery, further studies are needed to determine the best way to correct it. The ultimate goal of this research is to help patients recover more quickly from traumatic brain injuries.” The study, “The Negative Impact of Anemia in Outcome from Traumatic Brain Injury,” was presented at the recent 84th American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Scientific Meeting. The research also was recently published by the peer-reviewed journal World Neurosurgery.
Read more at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160525121227.htm
Doctor criticized in congressional report on concussion research counters claims
A pediatric neurosurgeon criticized in a congressional report Monday vehemently denies attempting to influence the selection process for a research grant on the NFL’s behalf and says no one from Congress contacted him before the report’s release. Dr. Richard Ellenbogen, who is co-chairman of the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee, said his two phone calls with National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke director Dr. Walter Koroshetz were about Ellenbogen’s belief in the need for a longitudinal study on the effects of concussion and he never told Koroshetz not to give a $16 million grant to researchers at Boston University instead.
Ellenbogen pointed to his work lobbying all 50 states to pass the so-called Zackery Lystedt Law as evidence of his commitment to studying the issue of traumatic brain injury in athletes, particularly young ones. “Why would I go and lobby 50 states to pass the Zack Lystedt law if I wanted to hide the (issue)?” Ellenbogen said. “We put protection in place for kids. That’s what I do. I’m there to make sports safer. Sports are good for kids. I want to make it safer. That’s my role. Period.”
“It was like the light in him had gone out”: Wife of Navy SEAL diagnosed with brain disease watches him unravel
THE EARLIEST SIGNS that retired Navy SEAL Dave Collins was changing were subtle enough that his wife, Jennifer, brushed them off as normal consequences of getting older. Then came the irritability and, as his temper shortened, forgetfulness. By 2012, it was bigger things. Other cognitive problems began to show. His temper was getting worse.
For all of the experts who believe chronic traumatic encephalopathy is directly linked to military service, others say there is still too little science to know, especially on the role of blast exposure. Many of the veterans who’ve been diagnosed with CTE also played contact sports, were exposed to psychological trauma or suffered concussions from falls or car accidents, making it difficult to know what caused what. Dave had traumatic brain injury, he said, like so many other former SEALs. To end his life, Dave had used a .32-caliber handgun he’d gotten the previous year to take to Afghanistan. “I wasn’t shocked,” his wife says. “I just wasn’t. By that point it was like, well, yes, I’ve watched him unravel for the past two months, and despite all of our best efforts, we just couldn’t stop the unraveling.”
Girls soccer facts, myths and unknowns
What we know. During recovery, only so much rest is beneficial. When returning from a concussion, it’s important for an athlete to begin the process of active recovery — not go into a dark room and do nothing for days. “You take people and do that and they actually become worse,” Dr. Jeffrey Mjaanes, Rush University Medical Center, said. “After that, really trying to get them back to normal life, get them back to school, get them back to a low-level of activity seems to be very beneficial.”
What we think we know. Girls soccer players are ‘more honest’ about concussion symptoms than boys. A study published by the JAMA Pediatrics last year found that girls soccer players suffered 4.50 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures while boys suffered 2.78 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures. “It seems that the most likely explanation, however, is women are probably just more honest about their symptoms — more likely to report symptoms.” Restricting headers at the youth level likely will reduce risks. The measures taken by U.S. Soccer to ban headers for players age 10 and younger — and limit them for players age 11-13 — should decrease the likelihood of concussions and make young players safer.
What we don’t know. Is there a connection between CTE and soccer, as there is with football? How many concussions are too many? Could there be a catch-all diagnosis?
Another new study: Youth take longer to fully recover from concussion
After a concussion, it might take young athletes up to two years to fully recover from the injury before they can play as skillfully as their teammates with no history of concussion, according Professor Lauren Sergio, York University. “Performing motor tasks, guided by what we see, is crucial in skill-based activities such as sports,” says Sergio. “But the current return to sport assessment doesn’t test to see if the injured person has regained this ability. Because of this often children and youth who have had a concussion end up returning to normal activities before they are fully recovered. We believe this makes them more vulnerable to another concussion.”
The findings indicate that those in the age group of eight and 16 are not only vulnerable to concussions, but because their brain is still developing, they are neurologically more fragile than adults for performing tasks that require cognitive motor integration following a concussion. Participants in both the groups were asked to perform two different tasks on a dual-touchscreen laptop. “We noticed significant difficulty in completing the tasks among those with concussion history,” says Marc Dalecki, postdoctoral candidate and lead author. “In fact, it took many of the children two years after the concussion to have a similar performance on the task as children who did not have a history of concussion.”
Read more at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160516181223.htm
Repeated sub-concussion head impacts may affect eye function
For U.S. college football players, head impacts that don’t cause concussion symptoms do still cause subtle and lingering changes in the eyes’ ability to focus, according to a new study reported in JAMA Ophthalmology. The results might provide a new tool for measuring the severity of the “sub-concussive” brain impacts that athletes and others, like soldiers, experience regularly, researchers say. Researchers studied 29 football players who volunteered to wear special mouthguards containing electronics that measured the number and magnitude of head impacts for each player. The players also had eye exams before each practice began and after the season was over.
There was no difference in the types or frequency of physical symptoms reported by players in either group. But researchers found that players in the high-impact group had gradual increases throughout the season in the “near point of convergence” of their eyes, which is the closest point at which the two eyes can view something clearly before double-vision occurs. The changes plateaued after a while, and then resolved by three weeks postseason.
Fruit flies may help us understand brain injuries: study
Using fruit flies as a traumatic brain injury (TBI) model may help researchers identify important genes and pathways that promote the repair of and minimise damage to the nervous system, a new study suggests. “Fruit flies actually have a very complex nervous system,” said Kim Finley from San Diego State University (SDSU) in the US. Because fruit flies grow old quickly, observing them allows researchers to rapidly study the long-term consequences of traumatic brain injury. “Traits that might take 40 years to develop in people can occur in flies within two weeks,” she said. To test whether flies can be used to model traumatic brain injuries, researchers used an automated system to vigorously shake and traumatise thousands of fruit flies. “Fruit flies come out of this mild trauma and appear perfectly normal,” said Eric Ratliff from SDSU. “However, the flies quickly begin to show signs of decline, similar to problems found in people who have been exposed to head injuries,” he said. In the study, injured fruit flies showed damage to neurons within the brain, as well as an accumulation of a protein called hyper-phosphorylated Tau, a hallmark feature of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), researchers said.
Injured flies also began to experience insomnia and their normal sleep patterns deteriorated. The results suggest that studying traumatic injury in fruit flies may uncover genetic and cellular factors that can improve the brain’s resilience to injuries, they said. “It is really a unique model. We have developed it to be reliable, inexpensive and fast,” said Finley. The findings were published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
Fish Oil could Save Around $15 Billion/year in EU Healthcare Costs
More widespread regular consumption of Omega 3 supplements among people aged 55 and over could save healthcare systems and providers in the EU a total of €12.9 billion ($14.69 billion) a year, according to an independent study commissioned by Food Supplements Europe. An analysis indicates that more widespread daily consumption of 1,000mg of Omega 3 EPA+DHA fish oil among individuals aged 55-plus would result in more than 1.5 million fewer CVD-attributed hospital events across the EU between now and 2020.
Overall it is forecast that in the EU, 24% of people aged 55 and over (i.e. 38.4 million people) are in danger of experiencing a CVD-attributed hospital event between 2016 and 2020. This is expected to cost as much as €1.328 trillion ($1.512 trillion)over this five-year period – equivalent to €34,637 ($39,453) per event.
Omega-3 lowers childhood aggression in short term
Incorporating omega-3, vitamins and mineral supplements into the diets of children with extreme aggression can reduce this problem behavior in the short term, especially its more impulsive, emotional form, according to University of Pennsylvania researchers who published their findings in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The Philadelphia randomized control study placed 290 11- and 12-year-olds with a history of violence into four groups: The first received omega-3 in the form of juice, as well as multivitamins and calcium for three months. For that same duration, a second group participated in cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, which included meeting weekly for an hour, with time split between the child, the parent and with both together. A third group in the study took the supplements and participated in CBT, and a fourth received resources and information targeted at reducing aggressive behavior. Blood samples at the experiment’s start and conclusion measured omega-3 levels in each child.
“Immediately after three months of the nutritional intervention rich in omega-3s, we found a decrease in the children’s reporting of their aggressive behavior… No matter what program you use, could adding omega-3s to your treatment help?” Raine asked. “This suggests it could.”
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-05-omega-lowers-childhood-aggression-short.html
Delayed concussion reporting may sideline college athletes for several more days
Athletes who wait to report a concussion may experience longer recovery times, say University of Florida researchers who found that college players who delayed treatment or removal from play missed an average of five more days of play than athletes who immediately reported concussion symptoms. The study appears in the May issue of the Journal of Athletic Training.
For the UF study, researchers examined data from the University of Florida Concussion Databank, which contains concussion-related medical history and injury details for athletes in UF’s varsity sports programs. The study included 97 male and female athletes participating in basketball, football, gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer, swimming and diving, track and field and volleyball who were diagnosed with a sport-related concussion between 2008 and 2015. Of those, 50 did not immediately report concussion symptoms. Researchers found that athletes who delayed reporting a concussion still took an average of five more days to receive medical clearance to return to play.
Read more at: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-05/uof-dcr050916.php
Dartmouth coach: Tackle-free practice reduces concussions
Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens makes a promise to recruited players before they take the field: “In four years, you will never tackle another Dartmouth football player.” Teevens, a former Dartmouth player who has coached at the Ivy League school for 15 years, has eliminated all live tackling from practices, including spring and preseason. He told Congress Friday the result has been far fewer concussions, less practice time missed due to injury — and wins.
Since cutting back on tackling in 2010, Dartmouth has not had a losing record. Last year, Big Green tied Harvard for the Ivy League championship. Just as important to Teevens: No defensive player suffered a concussion in 2015. Instead of practicing on each other, Teevens’ players practice on pads and dummies, including a robotic tackling dummy.
Younger football players more likely to play day after concussion
Only 10 per cent of young players with concussions resumed football that soon, but the results are concerning and suggest a need for more sidelines medical supervision and better recognition of concussion symptoms in children. Much of the attention on sports concussions has focused on professional football and in college, but there’s a need for more prevention efforts and research at all levels including among the youngest players, according to the researchers who published their findings in JAMA Pediatrics.
At all levels, most players were sidelined for at least a week. Time away from the sport of at least a month was most common among high school players — about 20 per cent, versus 16 per cent of youth players and 7 per cent of college players. Fewer than 1 per cent of high schoolers returned to play less than 24 hours after injury, compared with almost 5 per cent of college players and 10 per cent of youth players. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends athletes avoid returning to play until all concussion symptoms have disappeared. The study notes that procedures for youth players required athletes to get a doctor’s approval before returning to play.
High school football players suffer more symptoms after concussion than college players
High school football players are more likely to suffer more symptoms after a concussion, and to need more recovery time than their college counterparts, a new study finds. For the study, Kerr and his colleagues analyzed data from three injury programs. They found that more than 1,400 sports-related concussions were reported among youth, high school and college football players from 2012 to 2014. The most common symptoms reported were headache, dizziness and difficulty concentrating.
The study found that high school football players had the highest average number of reported symptoms of concussion (5.60), followed by college athletes (5.56) and younger players (4.76). For high school players, the likelihood of returning to play at least 30 days after concussion was higher (19.5 percent) than younger players (just over 16 percent), or college football players (7 percent), the researchers found.
9 Reasons I Won’t Eat Tilapia
If you’re a fan of fish, you’ve probably been told to stay away from certain species. We often hear of high mercury levels and sustainability issues, but how do you know which fish to eat? You would think fish that is readily available would be fish that’s good to eat. This logic makes sense, yet for some reason, tilapia is one of the most commonly sold fish, as it’s quite affordable. Before you pick up that next piece of tilapia, remember the following nine things.
1. The majority of tilapia is farm-raised in China.
2. May increase risk of cancer. Farmed tilapia contains high levels of pesticides and even flame retardants, as well as high concentrations of carcinogens.
3. Promotes inflammation. Farmed tilapia has low levels of omega-3 fatty acids yet very high levels of omega-6.
4. Concerns surrounding antibiotic resistance. Researchers found that 75 percent of tilapia tested had antibiotic-resistant bacteria in their gut.
5. Farmed fish conditions are inhumane.
6. Spread disease to wild fish.
7. Fed an unnatural diet. These fish are fed corn, soy and even chicken manure instead of a natural plant-based diet.
8. Pumped with hormones. These fish are fed methyltestosterone — a growth hormone.
9. There are much healthier options. Don’t shy away from fish, just know what you’re buying. Obviously, stay away from farmed-fish — the price difference to buy wild, sustainably caught options are well worth the price tag. Focus on consuming more Atlantic mackerel, Pacific sardines, wild-caught Alaskan salmon and freshwater Coho salmon. We need to move away from the concept that our food is being raised and produced “out of sight and out of mind.” Don’t let the popularity of tilapia fool you — you can make healthier, more sustainable choices
Read more at: http://www.thealternativedaily.com/reasons-i-wont-eat-tilapia/
Complete rest until symptom-free after concussion may not be best for recovery
Rest has long been the cornerstone of concussion treatment. For sports-related head injuries, for example, current guidelines say children should avoid returning to play — and all other physical activity — until all concussion symptoms such as headaches are gone. New research however, suggests those who exercise within a week of injury, regardless of symptoms, have nearly half the rate of concussion symptoms that linger more than a month.
“This is the first large-scale study to provide support for the benefits of early exercise on symptom recovery following acute pediatric concussion, shifting away from conservative rest towards more active physical rehabilitation recommendations,” Dr. Zemek said. “If earlier re-introduction of physical activities is, in fact, confirmed to be beneficial to recovery,” he said, “this would have a significant impact on the well-being of millions of children and families worldwide and cause a major shift in concussion management.”
Read more at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160430100401.htm