Can you prevent concussions?

Can you prevent concussions?

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Concussions are a part of a professional player’s life. It is a traumatic brain injury that affects a person's brain function. Basically it means that the soft brain tissue has crashed into the hard skull. Symptoms vary from slight headache, nausea and vomiting to balance problems, dizziness and blurry vision. In its worst form a person may have severe confusion, concentration problems or difficulties with memory. Concussions may last up to a few days or weeks. Depends on the situation.

According to this research, there are approximately 1.7 million annual traumatic brain injuries in the US that lead to a visit to the emergency department. If taken into account all patients and not just the ones seeking care, the estimation moves between 1.4 to 3.8 million concussions per year. Football consistently accounts for the highest number and percentage of athletics-related concussions in high school and college athletes. At the same time, soccer is responsible for the highest percentage of concussions in female athletes. Female athletes suffer concussions about twice as often as male participants in the same sport.

Amino acids for rescue?

What has been known for some time is that amino acids help people recover from traumatic brain injuries. For example this study explains well how nutritional intervention, such as with branched chain amino acids has shown to be a promising treatment option for traumatic brain injury.

What is still relatively new information is that amino acids can actually also help prevent traumatic brain injuries, too. If the branched-chain amino acids would be elevated in the circulation before the brain injury, the brain would readily access the branched-chain amino acids and the severity of injury would be reduced. According to the research made to mice (50 adult mice), pre-treated and pre- and post-treated mice exhibited significantly better motor recovery and cognitive function after traumatic brain injury than the other groups. The pre- and post-treated group had the best overall memory performance, whereas the pre-treated and post-treated groups only had limited improvements in memory compared to untreated animals. Pre- and post-treated brains had levels of glial fibrillary acidic protein that were similar to the sham group, whereas the pre-only and post-only groups showed increases.

According to the research, human studies on traumatic brain injuries are more difficult to perform because of the heterogeneity of the brain injuries, the complexity of identifying matched controls, and differences in the standard of care at multiple study sites. Jeter and colleagues measured circulating branched-chain amino acids levels in normal volunteers and in mild and severe traumatic brain injury patients. They found that branched-chain amino acids levels were significantly lower in traumatic brain injury patients, and lower branched-chain amino acids levels correlated with the severity of traumatic brain injury, suggesting that branched-chain amino acids were being utilized by the brain. 

Aquilani and colleagues performed a study on severe traumatic brain injury patients and provided a 19-g daily dose of branched-chain amino acids to 20 severe traumatic brain patients and compared them to 20 age-matched and Glasgow Coma Scale–matched controls. Impressively, 68% of branched-chain amino acids-treated patients emerged from vegetative states, whereas none of the untreated changed.

The research group recommends branched-chain amino acids for traumatic brain injury patients. According to their hypothesis, if circulating branched-chain amino acids are elevated at the time of traumatic brain injury, the branched-chain amino acids will prevent or reduce the severity of the injury. 

This is of course great news for the field of sport. Concussions are a high risk factor and may cause long absences and uncertainty not only for the person in question but for the whole team. If the impact of a traumatic brain injury can be limited, if not prevented, this is definitely great news.

“According to their hypothesis, if circulating branched-chain amino acids are elevated at the time of traumatic brain injury, the branched-chain amino acids will prevent or reduce the severity of the injury.”

In 2010, the University of Cincinnati decided to take action on prevention and management of concussions in its own athletes. They called on medical researchers at University of Cincinnati to develop a Concussion Prevention Program. It focused on strengthening athletes peripheral vision and neurovisual performance to avoid the hits that could lead to concussion and brain injury. Joe Clark, PhD, a professor in the Department of Neurology said they were able to improve depth perception for players and improve their visual sensory performance, leading to an 80 percent drop in concussion rates at UC. 

Today the Dynavision D2 training is designed to improve vision processing, speed of processing, eye hand coordination, visual fields, ocular motor performance and overall awareness. Drills are done as part of regular weight and conditioning training with the players going through circuits of exercises.

“They were able to improve depth perception for players and improve their visual sensory performance, leading to an 80 percent drop in concussion rates at UC.”

Concussions are typical in various sports. They come with the sport and so far many people have thought that there is nothing to do to prevent them but that is not the case. If preventive measures are a part of the daily routines, prevention is possible. Or at least teams could prevent them taking place in their worst form. And if this is not important for teams then what is? 

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