Have you or a loved one suffered a recent head injury? Well, then, you are probably going through some after-effects. Medical treatment, prescriptions, and operations can relieve your pain. Still, some easy home remedies might be of use to you.
The human brain is truly incredible. It can fix itself after injury—home remedies will just speed up that natural fixing-up process. This article will discuss some straightforward, everyday things you can do to help your brain get back to its old self.
The Good in Going Natural for Brain Injury Aftercare
A brain injury can wreak havoc long after the actual event. It’s like a ripple effect from the point of impact into different parts of the brain. Drugs may dull the pain, but they don’t exactly get to the heart of the problem. That’s where the beauty of natural brain injury treatments comes in.
Now consider this with brain damage:
- Headaches or migraines
- Feeling unsteady on your feet
- Nausea or emesis
- Memory lapses or brain fog
- Fatigue
- Anxious
- Muscular Spasm
Drugs can be the solution of choice after brain injury, but also the solution that can become more thorny. It was revealed that the atypical reaction to drugs is more prevalent in people after brain injury. These mysterious reactions and the side effects accompanying them often force survivors to look for other methods of dealing with life after traumatic brain injury.
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor
The good news is that many natural remedies provide effective relief from the long-lasting effects of a brain injury; they do what regular medicine often cannot, such as sparking the process of generating brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which your brain needs to stay healthy.
Think of BDNF as a fertilizing protein that increases the growth and survival of brain cells. It’s critical to both short-term recollection and long-term memory, enabling adaptation and change within the brain.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change. It is the process that powers up cells in the brain, makes them stronger, and forms new connections to improve the way they chat with the rest of the body. Repeating the same exercises can stimulate neuroplasticity even more.
At-home practices, such as acupuncture or enjoying music, can also encourage these brain cell-boosting proteins and neuroplasticity.
Very often, these home remedies for brain injury are much less costly than the usual form of medical treatment. Add to that the benefits of neuroplasticity and BDNF production, and home remedies become a wonderful solution for recovering from traumatic brain injury.
Useful Tips for At-Home Care After a Head Injury
It is important to note that although home remedies for head injuries are very helpful, you should never disregard what your healthcare professional says. You should consult with your doctor before taking any more natural approaches in your treatment plan.
Home remedies can quickly improve your situation, and they work best if you practice them with the traditional ones. After a brain injury, with your doctor’s approval, consider a number of natural ways to recover. Here are some that you could do:
Home Remedies to Heal from Head Trauma
Natural home remedies for head injuries can be so much beneficial, though it is not the alternative way to treat what your doctor has advised you to do. Suppose you do want to try a more natural form of healing
In that case, discussing this with your doctor before anything new is added to your treatment plan is very important. Also, keep in mind that although these home remedies will help you recover faster, they would work best when coupled with regular medical treatments.
After your doctor has positively encouraged doing so, you may experiment with several types of natural ways to help your brain heal. These may include:
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
If one has suffered a blow to the head, the brain may require more oxygen to recover and remain in good shape.
You can get this from something called hyperbaric oxygen therapy. You lie comfortably in a closed-off space and breathe pure oxygen for about an hour. Research indicates that such an oxygen increase cannot only diminish the swelling of brain tissues but is, in addition, much more effective when applied with other treatments.
However, before you begin with something new, it would be ideal to have a little chat with your doctor about health worries or queries that you may have.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a common, holistic therapy that many people seek after suffering a brain injury. Research indicates that acupuncture promotes the release of higher levels of BDNF in humans. It is also effective in treating such debilitating effects of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, as throbbing headaches and vertigo.
But perhaps most heartening, many people who have suffered serious brain injuries report that some significant changes occurred after the administration of a set of acupuncture treatments.
Herbal Teas
If you suffered a brain injury, then herbal tea is a very common and natural way to help the body heal itself. Of course, it does so by soothing your nerves and clarifying your mind. You most likely are already familiar with green tea, but let’s discuss some that are sans caffeine, such as chamomile, ginger, and peppermint. Ginger tea is a fabulous go-to, especially if you feel nauseated or if there is some swelling after a head injury.
Passionflower tea can also relieve worries or nervousness. Many other different kinds of herbal teas can also help, but always remember to chat with your doctor before trying something new to ensure that the tea doesn’t interfere with any medicines you’re already taking.
Interactive Metronome Therapy
Did you realize there’s a highly promising way to treat thinking problems following a head injury? It’s called Interactive Metronome Therapy. Imagine this—it’s sort of like an online game where you see if you can make a hand and foot exercise land right on a certain beat you hear through earphones.
It’s kind of like dancing to a rhythm! But that isn’t all, and this novel method isn’t only a fun way to pass the time; it really can assist in fine-tuning skills that most of us don’t even notice we’re using, such as ease of movement, attention, and regulating activity. How neat is that? And the best part is that this therapy is available right in your own home.
Hydration
Here’s a healthy hint: drink water! Actually, this is one of those important parts that will help your brain work. To know how much water to drink, just divide your body weight by two. That number is the number of ounces of water you need. It’s that simple!
For all those olive oil and fish lovers out there, they are full of omega-3 fatty acids, great for your brain. If you do not have enough of those, you might want to consider a fish oil supplement.
Mild Exercise
Those first few moments are critical to the steps you take if a person you know has just suffered a blow to the head. Of course, they need to rest and get medical advice, but new studies show that a little light movement can start sooner than we might have supposed. According to one such study, children and teenagers may find it especially helpful, which looked at cases of more than 3,000 students who’d had a bump to the head.
Just to be perfectly clear: that doesn’t mean we’re telling young people to go back and do the usual, ordinary sports activity right after they get a brain injury. Not even close. It’s actually the other way around.
The research suggests that slowly increasing mild physical activities, like walking, can be safe and beneficial while symptoms of the injury start to resolve. In fact, it may reduce the risk of those annoying persistent symptoms that sometimes really do become a pain in the head.
A very specific finding to be noted is the novel research finding that girls might take four times longer than boys for a full recovery from a concussion. While boys might rebound in about a week, it could take girls up to 28 days to feel back to normal. Scientists are hard at work figuring this out, but as of now, the reasons aren’t quite clear.
To Sum Up
While the prospect of brain injury is certainly terrifying, the good news is that there are several natural ways to help support this process. These include hyperbaric oxygen therapy, herbal teas, and mild exercise, which work together to help heal and protect the brain against future damage.