Concussions typically occur with acceleration deceleration injuries to the head and neck. This essentially means that it’s a whiplash injury. I recently began seeing a patient who had been in a mountain bike injury where he flew over the bars and landed head first into the ground. For eight months this 13 year old was having crippling headaches and nausea almost constantly. Everything overwhelmed him, including school, and he was forced to take his classes online. Even this was hard for him, however, and he couldn’t even focus on the work he was doing. On top of all this, he was also experiencing intense lightheadedness and neck pain. To put it simply, he was going off the deep end. His parents had tried just about everything to find relief for their son. Not only were these treatments not helping, but they were wildly expensive. They were about to start a treatment that would require them to take out a second mortgage on their home. Finally, they were referred into our office. After his first week of care, they were already planning his return to school. He saw much more improvement in that first week than he’d had anywhere else.

So how is it that a neck specialist like me can fix a concussion when people who specifically work on them can’t? Well, a true concussion will heal better when the brainstem has no tension, which happens to be just what I work on. Studies show that when the brainstem is free of interference, there’s double the amount of blood flow to and from the brain. This results in a huge boost to the amount of oxygen that gets to the damaged area. On top of this, that blood carries all the body’s healing properties to the affected tissue. Basically, better blood flow means better healing. That’s not all the brainstem has an affect on, though. 90% of the brain’s functions pass through the brainstem. If there’s an issue in your brainstem, your concussion is going to have a really hard time healing.

Did you know it takes about 60 g of force to cause a concussion in the brain? That’s 60 times the force of gravity! To put it in perspective, a 150-pound person would weigh 9,000 pounds under that much force. On the other hand, a neck injury only requires 4.5 g, or 13 times less than what’s needed for a concussion. And when you consider that 10% of Americans deal with concussions every year, it’s safe to say the number of neck injuries is much higher. Unfortunately, many of them go untreated and people deal with pain their whole lives that could be fixed so simply.

Now, with the speed my new patient was traveling at adding a significant amount of acceleration as he flew forward over the handlebars, he was surely travelling fast enough to injure his neck.  In fact, while analyzing the images we took of him, I found one of the largest misalignments I have seen in 16 years of practice.  His 100 pound frame and at least 4.5 g forces combined and transferred the whole blow into his upper neck, jamming that bone out of place. This put significant pressure on his brainstem and led to the state he was in when I first saw him. I remember asking him questions about his condition and there would be a 2-3 second delay between the question and when he would start to answer. He was having a hard time processing the question and his brain was having trouble forming those thoughts. After his second treatment, I remember him coming in with much more color in his face and having a conversation with me as if there was never an injury. You know what else is cool? No second mortgage on the family home!  

If you or a loved one has suffered a head injury, the fact is there was also a neck injury. That head injury will struggle to improve as long as the neck injury persists because that will impede the blood flow to the brain. Moreover, it could be a neck injury without the concussion. Symptoms don’t have to be as extreme as the ones my patient experienced for it to be a serious problem. Often, people feel discomfort but push it to the side and leave it untreated. A lot of the time, leaving things dormant only worsens the pain until it gets to an intolerable level. Here are some symptoms that commonly come with a concussion or neck injury:

• Headache
• Migraine
• Dizziness
• Tinnitus
• Irritability
• Sleep disturbances
• Blurred vision
• Neck stiffness
• Balance Disturbances
• Cognitive defects
• Attention deficits

Schedule a consultation with a Blair Upper Cervical specialist to see if upper cervical care is the missing piece in your concussion journey. 

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