THE CURE FOR CONCUSSION AND POST CONCUSSION SYNDROME

When I saw my son, 17, walk through the door, I knew something wasn't right. His eyes were red and glossy. He was moving slowly. "I got a concussion," he said. My heart sank. But little did I know what he--and we--were in for at that moment. He'd had bumps on the head before--clunking heads with a friend while playing basketball in the driveway, hitting his head on a seat at a stadium, even falling backwards on the snow while snowboarding (he had a helmet on). These were all considered mild concussions as he had a slight headache the next day. But in all of these instances, he was completely symptom-free in a couple of days. 

This was different. He'd been throwing a football back and forth inside the gym that day for fun, and when it was his turn to jump up and catch it, another kid jumped up as well for the ball, and sent him reeling backwards onto the gym floor head first.  They heard his head hit the floor in the hall outside the gym. 

We saw his pediatrician right away, who, after examination, said it was probably just a mild concussion, if that. I was there and can attest that my son did the tests fine at that point. However, days later, my son's symptoms worsened. Terrible brain fog. Complete inability to concentrate. Headaches. And he needed to sleep constantly. We cocooned him right away. No school, no tv/phone/computer. He got anxious. He didn't want to see his friends because he felt so "off." We tried all the natural remedies out there--fish oil, turmeric, epsom salt baths, chiropractic, cranial sacral work and acupuncture. Of all of those the acupuncture helped more than the others, but it still did not get him anywhere near "normal." To top it off, this was his junior year of high school and he had AP classes to study for as well as the SAT and ACT to take. But at that point none of us even cared about school responsibilities. We just wanted our son back. Weeks turned into a month, then more. 

He now had "post concussion syndrome."

So after two months of this hell, I got really desperate. I knew our naturopath had a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He'd mentioned that it was really good for concussions. But since nothing else had worked so far, I was skeptical. The other part of the puzzle was that hyperbaric is really expensive. Done through a naturopath, or other private entity, means you can't get your health insurance to pay for it, and you can't ask your MD for a prescription to do it at a hospital because insurance companies don't recognize the use of hyperbaric for concussion as a medically approved use. 

But by this time, my desperation, as well as my trust in my naturopath, won out. So we started my son on the hyperbaric oxygen regardless of our worries. We knew it would be a real commitment, both in time and money. You need to do 4-5 sessions a week for 3 or 4 weeks for it to be helpful. Or so my naturopath said. He didn't want to promise any miraculous outcome right away. We had to be patient, he said. So after the first "dive" (the tank is pressurized like you're doing an actual dive down into the ocean to "push" the oxygen into your cells), nothing was different. Nothing the second day as well. I hunkered down for the long haul and was hoping to see something in a week or two. But after the third day, wammo! My son noted a huge lifting of the brain fog! We were all so encouraged! He still had a ways to go to "normal" though.

But after each successive session, he got better and better. Every day, more energy, concentration, and personality came back. We saw our son become himself again. He did 12 sessions in all, (he was scheduled for 15 but he ended up not doing the last 3 as he felt he didn't need them), until he was completely and utterly cured from any symptoms of his concussion. It was nothing short of a miracle for us. 

One other bit of information: our naturopath also had my son do something called ACT, or Altitude Contrast Training, before going into the tank. This therapy entails riding a stationary bike with an oxygen mask on. You ride the bike intensely for 20 minutes as the oxygen is alternately increased, then decreased to imitate training at high altitude.  This makes your cells extra "hungry" for oxygen when you go into the hyperbaric chamber. I'm sure this also helped my son's recovery, but he didn't do this every day. I attribute his recovery mostly to the hyperbaric chamber.

Hyperbaric oxygen has often been called a treatment in search of a disease. Our naturopath uses it for a myriad of conditions, traumatic brain injury (concussion) being only one of them. It's also used for Lyme's disease, autism and an array of neurological disorders, with apparently very positive results. 

The travesty is that this incredibly helpful therapy is not being offered to concussion sufferers by mainstream medicine, when it is possibly the only true cure. I can't imagine the amount of people who are sitting around, out of school, out of work, out of reach, while hyperbaric oxygen chambers are sitting empty at their local hospitals, waiting for the odd burn or stroke victim to utilize them. I know they sit empty because I called all our local hospitals to ask if we could come in and use the chamber, and they said no, because concussion is not a medically approved use, and that hardly anyone uses them.