Have you ever had a concussion, car accident, head trauma, or significant injury?
Do you struggle with anxiety, OCD, IBS, SIBO, or POTS?
Did you know that brain injuries and physical symptoms are closely linked?
You're listening to Functional Wellness with Dr. Alison and today we are going to talk about how brain trauma, of any kind, can affect your health and what to do to care for yourself.
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Have you ever had a concussion, car accident, head trauma, or significant injury?
Do you struggle with anxiety, OCD, IBS, SIBO, or POTS?
Did you know that brain injuries and physical symptoms are closely linked?
You're listening to Functional Wellness with Dr. Alison and today we are going to talk about how brain trauma, of any kind, can affect your health and what to do to care for yourself.
In my practice I would say that most of my patients struggle with some form of anxiety, panic attacks, or depression. These issues are very common and really occur for a variety of reasons. My main focus with anxiety used to be getting blood sugar stabilized throughout the day to improve cortisol, sleep, and mood. Then working on neurotransmitters and getting the gut organized and digesting well. And this works really well and the change can be almost immediate and very drastic. I’ve worked with women who couldn’t leave the house, drive their car, or had to leave their job and their life turned around in just a few weeks.
But overtime, I have found quite a few people that just don’t respond no matter what we try and the missing piece has always been brain trauma.
I think it is really surprising, and negligent, that there is not more concussion care available for everyone. I would say 95% of my patients who have IBS, SIBO and anxiety all have had some type of brain or body trauma.
Another common issue is SIBO, small intestine bacterial overgrowth. You might feel the same way as many of my patients, where you do a protocol and you feel better for a little bit but then everything comes back. Or you have tried everything and nothing has worked. You have done all the testing and nothing has changed there either. SIBO almost always stems from a physical or emotional trauma that directly impacts the Vagus nerve.
Trauma can be anything from a car accident, whiplash, sports injury, your kid hitting you in the head hard enough, surgery, domestic violence, and emotional trauma.
There are amazing physical therapists and functional neurologists, usually chiropractors who are experts at retraining the brain and I have learned from my functional neurology mentors how to do a good neurological exam and then find the right treatment path for restoring the nervous system and brain so the body can heal.
One of the main reasons why you might try everything but nothing works or works long term is because your nervous system hasn’t been addressed yet!
When we have trauma, a few things happen within our brain and nervous system. First, physical trauma can obviously impact the brain and its specific lobes. When you hit your head, the brain can bounce off the skull and reverberate. Many times, someone who hits the front of their head will also have trauma to the back of the brain including the occipital lobe and cerebellum. They are off balance, clumsy, and anxious.
These injuries also affect the brains immune system, causing an increase in brain inflammation, leaky blood brain barrier, and decrease in the brains ability to create neurotransmitters. Addressing brain inflammation and immune system is much more important than trying to chase neurotransmitters and blaming serotonin for all of our issues.
Then, any type of whiplash will directly affect the thyroid. Studies have shown that the thyroid will have up to a 30% decrease in function after an accident and this can also lead to autoimmune issues.
When there is any type of physical or emotional trauma, the autonomic nervous system and it's connection to the body through the Vagus nerve, can also be impacted.
The PolyVagal Theory tells us that there are three functions of the vagus nerve.
There is the sympathetic segment that can focus on fight or flight and keeps us safe. If you get stuck in this loop you will feel chronically anxious, have diarrhea, filled with stress and anger.
The Dorsal Vagal system helps the body shut down or freeze to cope. You may feel anxious but disconnected, hopeless, and have constipation.
The Ventral Vagal system is our system of connection where we are safe, connected, and in flow and is a proponent of the parasympathetic, or rest and digest, system.
Trauma, injury, upset, and even surgery can trigger the vagus nerve and our brain to go into a protective mode.
And as an emotional example of how our nervous system regulates emotional trauma: we had a traumatic event happen this year and I had to tell my daughter what happened. When I told her the story, she just froze, her face went blank. Now, my husband said that she looked like she didn’t care but I said no! She froze, she shut down, she is quite literally in shock. Where my husband’s reaction was anger, fight, react which is his Sympathetic Vagal, my daughter’s and mine tends to be dorsal vagal where we retreat, hide, and shut down.
Depending on our emotional adaptability, safety of our current situation and home, we can stay in these states for minutes, hours, days, months, or even years. Emotional trauma can directly impact the brain, vagus, and body. I also highly recommend any book by Dr. Gabor Mate, who discusses childhood trauma effects on the psycho-neuro-immune systems of our body.
So what do we do?
First, is understanding how your body is responding and what areas of the brain and nervous system need support. We can do this through a neuro exam and of course symptom surveys.
Then we follow the treatment plan for those areas that need support. The key, as with everything, is that this type of work takes time. You can’t do brain exercises for one day and be cured.
I’ll give you the example of my son, who I talk about often. He was diagnosed with PANDAS when he was 18 months old after a strep infection affected his brain. He lost much of his function and personality. He stopped eating, singing, playing, talking. He stopped sleeping. Over the years he has gotten much better with his PANDAS treatment plan. He has also had a few head traumas like he broke his nose at school and hit his head at the pool. He also had a very serious emotional trauma this year and his brain just couldn’t do math anymore.
A couple weeks ago I did a neuro exam on him for fun and I found so many things that were off in his exam. He can’t draw circles with his non-dominant hand, he has trouble standing on one foot, and a few other things. His handwriting is just horrible.
Now every day he has his therapy homework that we do together. He has to draw with his left hand, he has to do head taps and belly rubs and we included yoga and balancing as well. Each time that we do these I change it up to challenge him. When he got the hang of the head taps and belly rubs, I had him switch hands. Then I had him stand on one foot. Now we play more of ‘simon says’ while I yell out what to do. It’s fun and funny, and of course we do it together.
His handwriting and math skills are getting stronger again and his memory for spelling. His grades are slowly improving as well. And his sleep, mood, and play are improving as well. It will take time and he will continue his nutritional support for his brain, diet changes, and vagus nerve exercises.
One of the easiest things to do right now is to start doing Vagus Nerve exercises and deep breathing exercises as well. I will post a link to my blog with the exercises here.
What about the emotional trauma? I always refer to EMDR therapy and finding someone who you trust that you can process through your stories and past. Therapy is not a one time and you’re healed situation. And I think the most frustrating part is that there aren’t always tools that you can use to ‘get over’ your pain. We have to talk about how we feel, process what happened, and look – think- feel through our trauma. Of course with therapies like EMDR, you are being active in your recovery but these things take time, support, self-compassion, and a curiosity on feeling better.
With this quick introduction to brain balance and how trauma can directly affect your brain, body, digestion, heart, and mood you now know to look at the history of your life and note any accidents or traumas that may have initiated any illness.
Again, please join us for my free course in December on Brain Balance where we will be doing a deep dive into these topics.
Vagus Nerve Brain Plan Sheet
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