Most neurologists agree that the omega acids in fish oil are beneficial to the brain. Therefore, I would recommend that all TBI victims try to include that in their everyday supplements. However, there is also a new and more organic option available, Purslane.
The following essay of mine was published in the Op-ed pages of the Orlando Sentinel on January 10, 2013. I weight it against the unreasonableness of the NRA.
Let’s start with my name, it is Michael Jason Saranko, but most people call me Mike. At the present time, I am a full time student at Hillsborough Community College, and a proud father of my son Alexander Nathaniel Saranko.
As if there were not enough ground shaking discoveries to go around in the field of brain research, a huge paradigm shift is underway not only in brain research, but in all of biology. The breakthrough is called epigenetics.
It is a very common complaint of victims of traumatic brain injury that since the injury they experience extreme bouts of fatigue. Symptoms of “fatigue” are often ignored or downplayed by doctors because it is considered a “vague” symptom.
Historically, there has been an association between brain injury and the later development of Alzheimer’s. The research regarding persons who have suffered repetitive trauma (boxers or football players) is clear – that repetitive trauma gives rise to the devastating condition known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.
An excellent study in the Journal of Neurotrauma (Browne KD et al. 2011) has shed light on another aspect of symptom onset – unconsciousness. Many insurance companies and some unread doctors, will insist that no brain injury can have occurred in an accident whereby the victim did not lose consciousness.
For many years it has been medical gospel that symptoms of a traumatic brain injury will appear immediately after the impact and will thereafter decrease over the passage of time through recovery.
In recent years a theory has been developed describing the brain as actively employing memory against incoming sensory data in order to avoid focusing on known factors and to try to predict instantaneously what is going to happen next. The brain has thus been called “a prediction computer.”
We know now that the brain is elastic throughout our entire lifetimes. That is, we are able to positively or negatively affect its structure by how we live. Illness and lack of cognitive stimulation result in a shrinking of key parts of the brain while physical exercise, cognitive stimulation, and healthy lifestyle tend to add brain mass.