What Affects Brain Injury Recovery? | Post Concussion Syndrome | Time it Takes to Recover from a TBI

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In this video, attorney Joe Lamb discusses the issues that can affect someone's recovery from a concussion. He goes over why some people seem to recover more quickly and have no adverse consequences while some people continue to have what's known as post-concussive syndrome.

How do certain mental conditions affect someone's recovery from a concussion? Research is beginning to show that people with preexisting depression, ADHD, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, and similar conditions, tend to be a little bit more vulnerable to concussion symptoms. Following a brain injury or concussion, these symptoms can be seriously aggravated, and sometimes that condition can be permanent. And part of that may have to do with the active versus passive clinical reserve, essentially the capacity that the brain has.

In addition, another issue for someone who has a brain injury is the age of the individual. Unfortunately, for those who are over the age of 40, a brain injury can be more severe and takes longer to recover from if at all. The statistics show in the objective findings that older individuals both for their bodies and their brains have less ability to recover from an injury than someone younger. And this is unfortunate, but not unsurprising. If someone's in their 70s versus someone in their 20s, and they were to break their arm, for example, it's well established that it's gonna take that person in their 70s a lot longer to recover the arm injury than it's gonna take for someone in their 20s. Similar to going to the gym, everyone as they get older reports, "The more often I go as I get older, the recovery process is slower." And this is how it is for brain injuries as well.

What is reserve capacity? There are two types of reserve capacity. There's passive reserve capacity and then there's active reserve capacity. This means that someone's passive reserve capacity is based on the actual neuronal connections that exist within the brain. This means that all of us have a certain number of neurons and for one reason or another when the brain has been injured some of us will be okay and stay above that threshold. Unfortunately, this passive threshold isn't something that can be changed, it has to do with the actual neuronal connections in each person's brain. There's a critical threshold after which someone begins to sustain brain damage. The theory behind this is that as animals our brains evolved to have a certain degree of capacity. And then over time, because our bodies aren't designed to last forever, it begins to slowly degrade.

The other concept is what's known as active reserve capacity. And this is something that, for the theory can be increased and changed. Active capacity is something that people can change by learning a new language, learning a musical instrument, or any other form of education. Life experiences have also been shown to potentially increase this active reserve capacity. What it means is that the more we learn, the more axonal connections our brain makes, and following a brain injury, it's been found that the brain makes active progress to try and overcome the damage that has occurred. This is why one of the worst things that can happen after a brain injury is having a subsequent brain injury soon after. It's well established that back-to-back brain injuries are significantly more serious than the sum of their parts. The theory is that once you breach this reserve capacity, you begin seeing brain damage. Some of the theories behind this emerged from the CTE research, from the NFL where it began to be found that not only is it concussive impacts that are seriously affecting brains, it's continuous sub-concussive impacts that were developing into CTE.

So really, at the end of the day, everyone's gonna be affected by a concussion differently. The factors that affect that are age, any preexisting conditions, and general mental and physical well being. And the more research comes out, the more we begin to see that there may be certain elements of passive and active capacity that can affect our ability to sustain a brain injury and continue on.