All those “non-concussions” add up to brain injury

You don’t have to have to receive a concussion diagnosis to have an injured brain. Small but repeated insults to the brain — falls, crashes, whiplash, being near explosions, landing on your tailbone — damage brain tissue. Even if the head is not directly hit, a blow or jolt to the body causes the brain to bang around in the skull and sustain damage.

Each insult may not be severe enough for a diagnosis on its own, but added together over time they can cause long term problems and raise the risk of dementia and other brain-related disorders.

Some immediate symptoms may be obvious, such as headache, feeling of pressure in the head, changes in vision, or dizziness. Some are less obviously related, such as increased irritability, anxiety, moodiness, fatigue, sleep problems, or lack of focus. But it’s also possible to have no symptoms at all despite damage to the brain.

The standard health care model does not assess the brain when addressing blows to the body. For instance, with whiplash the neck is cared for or with a back injury the back is addressed. But potential damage to the brain is ignored.

Each insult to the brain causes inflammation. Unlike the body, the brain’s immune system does not have an off switch and inflammation can go on for weeks, months, and even years, especially in a brain environment that is unhealthy or when injuries are repeated.

Over time this inflammation damages and destroys brain tissue, leading to declining brain function and an increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders.

Health of the brain before trauma matters greatly

Additionally, if your brain health is poor to begin with, your brain is going to fare much worse from a minor trauma than if it were healthy.

Researchers call this “diminished brain resilience.” This means the brain’s general health is compromised and thus less resilient to any traumas it may sustain. This explain why one person can bounce back from a head injury while another person disintegrates physically and mentally after a head injury of equal severity.

Factors that can diminish brain resilience include junk foods, too much sugar, not enough whole foods or vegetables, unhealthy fats, blood sugar that is always too high or low (or swings between both), food sensitivities, chronic inflammation, hormone deficiencies and imbalances, sleep deprivation, high stress, being sedentary, and many more.

Basically, the standard American diet and lifestyle is brutal for the brain, and sustaining a brain injury with this kind of poor support means you will fare much worse than you need to.

Functional medicine basics of eating an anti-inflammatory diet, maintaining a healthy gut, and tending to the health and balance of your entire body is the best way to not only better protect your brain in the event of an injury, but also help it recover from past injuries.

Functional neurology is a great way to identify and rehabilitate the areas of your brain most affected. Functional medicine addresses the health of the body as a whole, which supports the brain. Ask my office for more advice.

How a “leaky brain” raises your risk of dementia

It has been a hundred years since a Nobel Prize winner discovered the thin barrier that surrounds and protects brain. Since then, we’ve learned this mesh of tightly joined cells, called the blood-brain barrier, is highly selective in a healthy person. It allows the transport of compounds back and forth through an intricate transport system while keeping out most everything else in the blood stream that can damage the brain. This includes heavy metals, toxic proteins, pathogens, and red and white blood cells.

Accelerated aging + Inflammation = Leaky Brain

Now, scientists have discovered that brain degeneration weakens the blood-brain barrier and causes it to “spring leaks.” This is especially true in the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with learning and memory. This discovery adds to the growing evidence that diseases of aging such as dementia and Alzheimer’s are sometimes linked to what functional medicine practitioners call a “leaky brain.”

Researchers studying the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease have found significant amounts of compounds in the brain that a healthy blood-brain barrier should have kept out.

Since not every aging person develops cognitive impairment, scientists theorize that the leaks are more extensive in some people than others. They also believe that some other phenomena, such as inflammation or pathogens, may be involved.

Most research points to inflammation. Recently, biologists in the UK found that a molecule called microRNA-155, which is elevated in inflammation, creates gaps between the cells of the blood-brain barrier. They also found that the same molecule is elevated in inflamed brain areas of patients with multiple sclerosis.

Even brain conditions such as depression, anxiety, brain fog, and various neurologic symptoms are linked to body-wide inflammation, which often starts in the gut.

Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain

A “leaky gut” allows bacteria and toxic molecules to pass through an overly permeable gut lining into the bloodstream. This causes inflammation throughout the body, and a leaky brain is often one unfortunate consequence.

Other inflammation triggers that contribute to a leaky brain are gluten sensitivity and similar food intolerances, out-of-control blood sugar, and too little thyroid hormone. Injury directly to the brain itself, such as in concussion, can also spark inflammation that damages the blood-brain barrier.

Repairing leaky brain with functional nutrition

You can protect your brain in part through various functional medicine strategies. This includes supporting the metabolic health of the brain by managing blood sugar, supporting gut health, addressing infections and toxicity, and following an anti-inflammatory diet. Nutritional compounds that support repair of leaky gut also help repair leaky brain, as do compounds targeted at quenching brain inflammation.

Brain-saving nutrients include:

• Precursors to the “master antioxidant,” glutathione, or absorbable forms of glutathione such as s-acetyl-glutathione
• Essential fatty acids, particularly DHA 
• Fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K 
• Probiotics 
• Prebiotics

Ask my office about whether leaky gut and leaky brain may be playing a role in your brain-based symptoms.

Getting a grip on the blues with serotonin support

If you watch TV, read magazines, or surf the internet, you can’t escape the ads for drugs to treat depression and other mood disorders — antidepressants are touted as a magic bullet for the blues.

True, these drugs help some of the one in ten people plagued by dark moods, but for others, taking the mood-lifter du jour does not bring relief. Or the relief comes with side effects so intolerable that 10-15 percent of people stop taking them.

How antidepressants work

The list of depression symptoms is a long one and the root causes can vary — poor gut health, inflammation, food intolerances, hormonal imbalances, low thyroid activity, and so on.

On a neurochemical level, depression also can involve poor activity of the feel-good neurotransmitter — serotonin. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry messages between nerve cells.)

Antidepressants relieve symptoms of depression by boosting the amount of serotonin in circulation. The most commonly used ones belong to a drug class called selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Celexa, Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil.

These drugs block reabsorption of serotonin, which increases the amount circulating in your body. However, SSRIs won’t help if you don’t have enough serotonin to begin with. And even when these drugs do work, long term use is tricky. Eventually, the drug may raise serotonin levels too high, causing side effects, or serotonin resistance.

Boosting serotonin naturally with amino acids

Functional neurology offers alternative approaches to poor serotonin activity, making the most of tryptophan, an amino acid that the body uses to produce serotonin.

Unfortunately, simply eating more tofu or turkey — well-known dietary sources of tryptophan — won’t do the job as the amounts they contain are too small. Instead, supplementation with tryptophan itself or its precursors such as 5-HTP (5-hydroxytryptophan) may be helpful.

The amino acid can then be ferried across the blood brain barrier, where it breaks down to serotonin.

Ultimately, depression is a result of poor firing in the frontal lobe, so the key in functional neurology is to figure out what is causing the poor firing. In the meantime, supporting serotonin pathways if you exhibit serotonin deficiency symptoms may help.

Serotonin deficiency symptoms include feeling down all the time, no longer enjoying the things you used to, insomnia, sadness, rage and anger, inability to sleep deeply, not enjoying relationships, and feeling worse when it’s cloudy and dark.

Searching for the root cause

Providing brain support is crucial for relieving symptoms, but long-term relief usually requires pinning down the cause of your blue moods. Although poor firing of the brain and neurotransmitter imbalances cause symptoms of depression, the real question is what caused the brain to become imbalanced in the first place?

In functional neurology we know that ten different people can have depression for ten different reasons. Some of the more common underlying causes of depression we see are:

• Poor gut function; leaky gut; gut bacteria imbalances
• Blood sugar imbalances 
• Low thyroid function Autoimmunity (when the immune system attacks tissue in the body and/or brain) 
• Chronic inflammation 
• Hormonal imbalances

Although people may sometimes find relief or a boost from pharmaceutical options, many can significantly relieve if not resolve depression through addressing the underlying causes of their poor brain activity.

If you struggle with depression, ask my office how we can help you feel better.

Brain plasticity: “Use it or lose it” to stay sharp

Brain cells, or neurons, are similar to muscles in that they are subject to the same basic “use it or lose it” principle to stay healthy well into old age.

Although genetics play a role in how well our brains age, the brain also responds profoundly to dietary and lifestyle influences. Although the brain loves healthy food and regular exercise, it also needs ongoing stimulation to stay vital.

As we go through life we constantly lose neurons as a normal part of aging. Some people show this decline through loss of memory and slower mental speed. However, some stay sharp and lucid, even when autopsy results show all the signs of Alzheimer’s.

Why? Although they may have fewer neurons, the neurons they do have communicate efficiently with one another.

A healthy neuron receiving plenty of stimulation branches into other neurons to improve communication. For instance, if you learn a new skill, whether it’s tennis or French, the neurons involved in that develop more and more efficient communication pathways between one another so the skill becomes easier for you. This helps you learn new things and become more efficient at the things you already know.

Because the brain runs the body, healthy plasticity is also good for your organs, cells, and hormone function. An active brain that fires regularly likewise stays better connected with the nerves throughout the body so operations run more smoothly. This can help keep prevent things like high blood pressure, dry eyes and mouth, incontinence, digestion issues, and other function regulated by the autonomic nervous system.

Although the brain responds well to stimulation, don’t overdo it. Over stimulation fatigues neurons and can make you “crash.” If you fatigue easily doing mental tasks, work on gradually building your brain endurance without crashing.

For plasticity to work, the brain needs a healthy environment supported by appropriate blood sugar levels (not too high or too low), good blood flow, and good neurotransmitter activity. Neurotransmitters are brain chemicals that facilitate communication between neurons. The most well known neurotransmitter is serotonin, which plays a role in happiness or depression.

When plasticity goes bad — PTSD and pain

Just as plasticity can be healthy, so can it be unhealthy. Negative plasticity makes you more efficient at things that are harmful, such as stress, pain, and bad habits.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an example of negative plasticity. PTSD is basically the brain becoming highly skilled at stress. Eventually it becomes so efficient at stress that the slightest trigger — a loud sound, flash of bright light, crowd of people, or a strong emotion — sends it into a fight-or-flight tail spin.

As this cycle takes root it actually changes the shape and neurochemistry of the brain to make it highly reactive to stress. This is why PTSD is so difficult to simply “turn off.”

Fortunately, many functional neurology approaches can help rewire the brain to be more directed toward positive plasticity rather than negative. Ask my office how we can help.

Your screen time before bed is keeping you awake

If you’re accustomed to zoning out before bed in front of your TV, phone, or computer, you are significantly hindering your brain’s ability to produce sleep hormones.

A recent study found the blue light emitted from digital screens play a major role in sleep disturbances that have become so common. Almost half of Americans report sleep issues negatively affect their lives and the Centers for Disease Control calls sleep deprivation a public health epidemic. Chronic insufficient sleep is linked to obesity, diabetes, inflammation, and other metabolic disorders.

In the study, participants wore blue light blocking glasses for three hours each night before going to bed while continuing their normal nightly screen routines.

Blue-blocking outperforms supplements

After two weeks, the subjects showed an almost 60 percent increase in the production of melatonin, the primary sleep hormone.

This is an even greater increase in melatonin that taking an over-the-counter melatonin supplements can provide.

The subjects also wore activity and sleep monitors during the study. Data from these monitors showed improved sleep quality, falling asleep faster, and sleeping longer.

Other research has shown that subjects using an iPad before bed experienced reduced melatonin and poorer sleep compared to subjects who read a book before bed in dim light.

Healthy melatonin levels are necessary for good immune function and chronically low melatonin is associated with a risk for prostate, colorectal, and breast cancers.

Brain health and function depends on sleep

Although we all feel better when well rested, sufficient sleep is also vital for brain health and function. We need enough sleep to maintain focus, concentration, memory, mood, and coordination. Because the brain regulates the body’s systems, functions such as hormone balance, digestion, and detoxification are also impacted by lack of sleep.

Tips to support sleep hormone production

Blue light isn’t inherently bad; the sun is the largest source of blue light and our bodies depend on sufficient sunlight to regulate our sleep-wake cycle and myriad other functions.

However, digital devices and LED lights emit blue light similar to the sun’s that confuse the body’s internal clock when used at night. Artificial blue light activates photosensitive cells that suppress the production of melatonin.

In addition to wearing blue-blocking orange glasses before bed, people can also use blue-blocking screen filters, use lamps with orange bulbs at night, and wear blue-blocking glasses while out at night and exposed to artificial light. Some devices have night mode settings that lower blue light and computer and phone apps can be downloaded that do the same.