Like any other area of your body, your brain can be injured. And when it is, we need to find ways to help it adjust and heal so that you can function as well as possible. That’s where brain training comes in.
How do you help the brain to heal after an injury?
Rehabilitation is important after a brain injury. Depending on its severity, you may need to relearn basic skills such as walking, talking or performing daily tasks independently.
It’s common for people to see a whole team of healthcare professionals after brain injury, including an occupational therapist, physiotherapist, speech pathologist, neurologist and even a psychologist.
New therapies are now on offer too, including those used at Neurofit Brain Centre to promote brain activity that makes an active difference.
Brain training for brain injuries
Water takes the path of least resistance. When it falls as rain, it runs down to the nearest rivulet then finds a creek or river that will carry it along. If there’s a sudden obstacle in the way – a rockfall, for example – the water will find a way around it to continue its journey.
Your brain does something similar. It sends messages along well-worn pathways because that’s the fastest, easiest route. A brain injury can block the pathway with dead cells, though. So your brain has to find a new route. At first, it may feel slow and cumbersome, nowhere near as good as the original. But, over time, the new pathway becomes more familiar and the task becomes easier.
So, how do we help your brain create new pathways? Through a program of brain training.
Brain training at Neurofit Brain Centre
After a brain injury, we seek to stimulate the weakened areas of the brain. One of the main ways we do that is with light therapy (photobiomodulation), which has been shown to improve executive function, working memory and sleep in people with traumatic brain injury.
Photobiomodulation
Light is vital to our wellbeing. When we’re deprived of sunshine over a long period, we experience mood disturbances such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or develop rickets due to a lack of vitamin D.
So it stands to reason that light could be helpful for our healing if it is directed in the right way.
Photobiomodulation (PBM) does that.
In PBM, we use low-level laser or LED light to produce energy in brain cells. We do this by attaching red or near-infrared LEDs to chosen sites on your head. The light then penetrates the brain cell’s mitochondria and sets off a series of changes to that help the cell function better, such as increased oxygenation and blood flow.
What is infrared light, you wonder? It’s a form of light that our eyes can’t see. If you imagine a rainbow, you might remember that it starts with red and ends with violet. Infrared light was discovered by German scientist, Sir William Herschel, in 1800. He passed sunlight through a prism to split light into a rainbow then placed a thermometer in the different colours within and beyond that spectrum. He was surprised to find that the thermometer showed that the temperature was rising in the dark area beyond the red light, suggesting that there was more light beyond red that we couldn’t see but which still generated heat.
In the 200 years since Herschel, we’ve learned how to harness that light and heat and use it for a wide variety of purposes from TV remote controls and thermal imaging to medical treatments to treat burns, ulcers and skin lesions among many other applications.
Photobiomodulation is the process of using infrared light to create cellular changes. When it comes to brain injuries, we’re looking for outcomes that improve function.
In one study, patients with a TBI had LED clusters placed at 11 spots on their scalp as part of PBM therapy 3 times a week. Six weeks later, they demonstrated significant improvements in executive function and verbal memory along with fewer post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Acquired brain injury – how it happens
Causes of brain injury include:
- Loss of oxygen
- Stroke – which can affect children as well as adults
- Toxicity through alcohol or other drugs
- An infection like meningitis or encephalitis
- Degenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease or Parkinson’s disease
- Trauma as a result of
- An accident (think car, motorbike, boat or bike)
- A sports collision
- A fall
- Violence
- Combat injuries or explosions.
How Neurofit Brain Centre can help
Whether it’s your own or your child’s, living with a brain injury can be debilitating. You’re eager to see improvements.
At Neurofit Brain Centre, we believe that brain activity makes an active difference. We employ a number of evidence-based therapies to stimulate your brain in the right places to improve your function and your quality of life.
Neurofit Brain Centre add various different stimulations with laser therapy to co-activate the injured brain and maximises the effect of the therapy. Contact the Neurofit team to see how our programs can help ease symptoms and promote healing.
Disclaimer
All information is general and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Neurofit Brain Centre can consult with you to confirm if a particular treatment approach is right for you.
