These come in many flavors and with brain injury they seem to ramp up exponentially to the point that a “regular” migraine looks like a friendly kitty cat. Sardonic grin. Oh, and they can go on for days, weeks, months and even seem perminant.
Homeopathy has helped me a LOT here, to the point that I rarely get them anymore and when I do, they are usually gone before they really get started, within a few hours to half a day. I use two different Banerji protocols:
There is so much that we lose with a bludgeoned brain, and it is invisible to others, who often can't begin to understand, or, more humorously, think they understand because they sometimes lose their keys. Grin.
The need to grieve a loss of capacity isn't often understood because they are usually associated with the death of a loved one, or having a terminal illness. Brain injury, however, is a mini-death, or a series of mini-deaths. We lose capacity. The planet we live on is simply harder on us that the planet everyone else lives on.
You read that title correctly. Autophagy is a very useful biological “clean-up crew” process that helps get rid bits and parts floating around that no longer need to be there. Trouble is, the conviences of modern living stop the clean-up crew from coming around disrupting our feasting and lounging. Regular, long-term, responsible fasting exercise, ketogenic diet (or at least low carb) were build in parts of daily life for thousands of years before we became agrarian.
Bottom line, living in such a way that your body regularly engages it’s self-cleaning mechanisms, autophagy, not only promots long, healthy living, but it can help heal the brain because the body is restoring #Godsengineering, working as God created us to work.
I’ve been on a ketogenic diet, including with regular intermittent fasting, for over ten years and have noticed improvement in mental clarity, focus, and other aspects of cognition I struggle with because of my brain injury. It seems I’m not the only one noticing the effect of high-fat ketogenic and intermittent fasting on improving brain function.
A fascinating study out of Isreal that reveals what every person with brain injury intuitively discovers, even if we fight against it because sleep is “inactivity.” Far from being inactive, sleep, science is discovering, is part of God’s engineering that helps us heal and function as fully as possible.
Combine 8-10 hours of sleep (or more, as needed) per day with regular exercise, also shown to aid brain function and healing, and we are well on our way to a solid long-term brain injury healing plan!
Because of various studies I explored going barefoot, floor living, high-fat ketogenic diet, regular aerobic and anaerobic exercise, and other practices to help restore God’s engineering so my body and brain were able to function as fully as possible, including maximizing healing over time. So far, these have born amazing fruit. Here are a few more studies that shed light on various aspects of the brain. Keep in mind they reveal specific things that may not seem to relate to brain injury directly; however, the concepts they reveal likely have a lot to do with neural connections and healing, which has obvious applications for long term brain injury healing.
Please see the links below, and may God startle you with joy!
Another aspect of #Godsengineering, floor living follows the precipt of removing cushioning and support for sitting and sleeping, and it's benifits can be profound. Positions such as cross-legged, squatting, kneeling, even leaning against a tree, insted of sitting in a chair in a position we weren't designed for, strengthens our core muscles, helps our muscles be limber and lithe and strong, and gives us better, stronger posture, all of which aid our motion when we are up and about, standing, walking, running, riding, working. Paired with going barefoot, our quality of life can be greatly improved through better body and mind function all the time.
New York and other states have now passed laws making it legal to kill a baby up until the navel is visible as s/he is being born. This is murder and evil and we are an abhorrent society to allow it, let alone have leaders who celebrate it.
What has this to do with brain injury? If society doesn't recognize the clear and established scientific facts that:
It was only a few years ago, around 2010 or so, after living with brain injury for eight years, that I began to understand more fully the extent of harm to my capacity adrenaline causes and just how long it takes to leave my system. I suspect most of us with bludgeoned brains feel the effects of adrenaline and friends (there is a slew of neurochemical stuff released that no one is really sure what all it does) without even realizing it for the simple reason that we are under constant bombardment from stimulation.
“Your brain injury isn’t real.”
“You just do what you want.”
“You use brain injury as an excuse.”
“You’re not brain injured, you’re mentally ill.”
Horse Hocky n’ Monkey Muffins!
These are the messages people with brain injury receive, overtly or covertly, from people (family, friends, ministers, doctors, aquaintences, anyone) who do not believe them. What effect does it have on a person striving and struggling to function as fully as possible no matter the obsticles to be told they are pretending, faking, or exagerating their brain injury? Devistating. Horrific. Sometimes life altering. Always, damaging.