hello YouTube, Dr. Cameron Marshall here, concussion doc, back with another video as part of our patient concussion series. This video here is all about little bumps causing subsequent concussions. Okay, this is probably one of the most common questions that I get, and I've been wanting to make this video for a very long time. And just this past week as part of the concussion fix program. For our viewers and members that are not yet part of the concussion fix program, what this is, is an online program for concussion patients. We have a course curriculum that they work themselves through to help fix their physiology, to help fix their persistent concussion symptoms. We have about a thousand members in there right now. Anyway, every week we do a live session with myself, our naturopathic doctor, our psychotherapist, and other instructors and all the members, and we talk about various topics. They ask us questions, so we're available there for direct Q&A to help them in their recovery journey. This past week

um, I was actually presenting on a number of topics like air travel. I was presenting on sex and orgasm, and this particular question, which I'm going to, uh, show you. I'm actually going to show you a snip from the concussion fix live session that we did because it just explains this concept, I think, really, really well. So this is, you had a concussion, maybe you even felt great for a period of time, and now all of a sudden it's like any little bump, somebody brushes up to you, you get knocked in the head while you're out and about, you hit your head on the car door, something really stupid, and you end up with all, all your symptoms coming rushing back. You go completely downhill, and you're wondering why this is happening, how you can get it to stop happening. And I think this is going to help you out. And so I wanted to share this with you here. If you're not already subscribed to my Channel, please hit that subscribe button and make sure to turn on the Bell.

notifications so you get notified for videos. I put out all sorts of free content for concussion patients like the video. Share the video, send it to people you know that are also struggling with maybe something similar because I think this will be able to help them out. If you're not already a member inside the concussion fix program, I will put a link to that program in this description. It is probably by far one of the best concussion resources that has ever been created, and I know it's mine so I'm obviously biased in saying this, but the results of this program are truly incredible. Like I said, we have currently about a thousand members. We've probably had, you know, 2500 or so come through the program full recovery without having to go and see anybody in terms of healthcare professionals, simply following the program, following the diet plan, following the gut repair, following the autonomic nervous system regulation steps, and basically you can heal your own concussion, even if you've had symptoms for 10 15 years. It doesn't

matter the underlying physiology is the same. It can take a little longer the longer it's been, but you can still recover from concussion. Anyway, enough of that. Without further ado, I'm going to dive into this video. This is from our Concussion Fix Recovery Series, and we're talking about small impacts causing another concussion injury. How do we stop it? How do we get it to um not happen anymore? Hope you enjoy. Please like the video if you do and share and subscribe. All right. Now, like I said, this is the most common question that I get throughout everything. And so I might actually have to put this video on YouTube just because I get this question so often. I can just I need something to just quickly refer people to. So the variance of questions I get are these: I had a concussion last year, but I was doing really well and everything was going well, and I had no more symptoms. But then I just had another concussion with just like the smallest bump. Or now every time I bump my head, I get another concussion.

so that's one type of question: how does this happen, why does this happen, how can I stop it from happening. And then the other one is I'm still symptomatic but every time I bump my head, I get another concussion, and I'm way back down to uh, to square one. And again, just this is not the case. These are not likely to be other concussions unless the force is quite significant. I've already said this in this presentation, but concussion requires 70 to 120 G's of acceleration. That is less than one percent of all of the hits in college and professional football. So you're talking about the hits in football, less than one percent of them hit concussion threshold, right? So you're talking guys getting smashed and tackled on the field, less than one percent of those are enough force to cause concussion. 77% of all the hits in football are below 30 G's, right? And if European football is more your thing, and soccer, heading the ball is 20 G's, right? 20 G's, concussion requires 70 to 120.

even if you get hit in the head with a soccer ball, right, that's not enough to cause another concussion injury. Now, I've used this chart before in previous presentations, but if you haven't seen it, I'll kind of quickly go through it. Right. 1G is standing at sea level, but it's also turbulence, right. Uninhibited sneeze is about 3G, so if you sneeze, you're not getting another concussion injury, right. Even if your brain, you know, rattles inside your head a little bit, there's no way that that can cause another concussion. It's way too far below threshold. If we were that fragile, everyone would be getting concussed daily from every little sneeze and, you know, everything, roll roller coasters. Here's another one. People, oh, I went on a roller coaster and all my symptoms came back. I think I got another concussion. No, you didn't, okay. You're you did not experience enough g-forces to be able to cause a concussion injury unless you really whacked your head off something.

um you wouldn't experience enough g-forces for that now could you again have an exacerbation of symptoms with that of course yes if you have visual motion sensitivity and you're moving around that could trigger symptoms if you have neck dysfunction and you're trying to stabilize your neck throughout the whole thing yes that could increase your symptoms but is that another concussion no it's exacerbation of some dysfunction that you already have from you know previous concussions or from other factors okay all the way down to here headers 18 G's mean mean force of a hit in in Boys Hockey 18 G's mean force of a head um tackle football 25 and high school and college concussion in a child is 62 G so they're a little bit less Olympic boxer like a jab just a straight jab to the face is actually less than concussion threshold which obviously surprises a lot of people so even if an Olympic boxer punches you directly in the face it is less than a concussion threshold provided you're

able to establish stabilize, and you know the hits coming because you need kind of a little bit of neck stabilization for that, but this is why you don't see many fighters get knocked out with a straight-on jab. It's always a hook because rotation is enough to cause concussion. So that's why that's there, uh, concussion is up here 98 G's. The range is 70 to 120, but the mean, kind of the median forces, is 98 G's. And then when you get into this range was really high, this is when you get into kind of subdural hematoma type ranges, you're getting brain bleeds and that type of thing. So it's all based on the g-forces that are experienced, but aren't I more susceptible, right? If I've had a concussion, I've had a few concussions in my life, or I have post-concussion syndrome, aren't I more susceptible? Isn't my brain more fragile? Isn't it more susceptible to getting injuries? And the answer is no, there is no evidence, zero.

zero evidence to suggest that someone with a previous concussion has a nut gets more concussions, or subsequent concussions with less Force, as long as the injuries are far apart. Okay, if the injuries are within the same week or within the same two weeks, then potentially there's a cumulative nature to this where you can get concussed with less Force, but if the injuries are outside of that, let's say outside of, you know, four weeks apart from each other, then there is no evidence to suggest this. In fact, there's only been a handful of studies done, and one study that looked at this recently that actually did the best comparison. Um, they found no difference in concussion forces experienced by somebody who was on their first concussion or somebody who was on who's had multiple concussions. The force to cause that injury is the same, so you still need, uh, the same amount of force according to what we currently know. All right, so if you want to just think about it that way, you're not more susceptible to injury.

there's no evidence to suggest that you are. Now, you may have heard quotes or um things like this once you've had a concussion, you're more likely to get future concussions, okay, you may have heard that type of statement. That statement is actually true. Okay, hear me out here though, that statement is true, but it's it's it's not the same, it's not equivalent, okay, so the reason why that statement is true is that once in all the studies if people that have had previous concussions, right, because they usually study athletes, people that have had previous concussions are more likely to get subsequent concussions, okay, now is that because their brain is more susceptible, no, they're more likely to get subsequent concussions for a variety of potential reasons, one, the position they play, right, the position you play in sport has a massive determination on your concussion exposure, right, if you're running back in football versus a lineman, the running back is way more likely to get concussed just based on the nature of their position, wide.

receivers are way more likely to get concussed than somebody who's playing on the line. So just because you're a football player doesn't mean that your exposure is equivalent. So if I'm a wide receiver and I've got a concussion, am I more likely to get another concussion? Well, yeah, because I'm still a wide receiver. Okay. And also it depends on your body size, your body type, your playing style, right? Some people are more aggressive, some people, you know, tend to lead with their head, some people go into situations, and other people are the type to dodge and move out of the way and try to avoid a tackle, whereas others are the type to kind of run right in their head first. So what's your risk-taking behavior? So if you look at the research that's been done mostly in athletes because that's an easy population to study when it comes to concussion because they have impact exposure happening, the quote is, If you've had a concussion, you're more likely to get

ones in the future. And actually, it's like four or five times more likely than somebody who's never had one. And there's, but there's so many variables that go into that. Why is that? We don't really know, but there's a whole bunch of things that we can't control for and we don't know. But if we actually look at brain susceptibility, the studies have been done on that find no difference. So it doesn't seem to be brain susceptibility. So what else could it be? Okay, so there's still a lot we don't know here, but so far what we've seen is that there is no increased susceptibility to somebody to get another concussion just because they've had one in the past. Okay, unless they're, you know, doing really risky things and that's just the nature of their life and they go and they get in bar fights and all these types of things. Well, yeah, you're more likely to get concussed if that's the type of life that you lead, but if you're, you know, a quote-quote

normal person who's not, you know, engaging in super high-risk activities, then your chance of getting a concussion is just the same as everybody else's. Okay, so here's how to look at it. Right in these low g-forces, we don't have any type of damage, anything possible, but you may get a neck injury. So that's something else to consider, is that even though you may have just bumped your head and you have this increase in symptoms, well, it may not have been enough to cause a concussion. But if you already had neck dysfunction, it's easy to kind of re-injure and aggravate that neck. And guess what, the symptoms of that are they're the same as concussion. So you may just be dealing with exacerbation of neck injury. Okay, at these really low G-Force ones, when you get into this, you know, range, you're possibly getting into what we call sub-concussive impacts. Into some of them like, you know, there's research happening now, or at least speculation that potentially some of these impacts may cause these kind of

microstructural changes or maybe increased inflammation or these types of things that may may not cause symptoms in a you know quote healthy person, but they're still potentially important. We don't know, and then this is concussion range, and then this is when you get into kind of more severe kind of ranges. So there's obviously some sort of spectrum here, so the really light hits, you know, like Bang Your Head on a countertop or hitting it on a car door or something like that, this is like well within this range. This is probably in the like less than 10g category, uh, you're nowhere near concussion threshold. Could you be causing other issues? Well, yeah, there could be neck issues, there could be other things happening that cause the same symptoms, and so you may attribute it and think I've got another concussion, but the forces are too low, so it's something else along that way. So what causes me to feel this way? Well then why, why am I having these symptoms? Well, it's the same thing that

causes PCS. So, the same reason some patients get concussed and have really long-term symptoms, is the same thing as when somebody who had a concussion before and is, you know, quote, recovered, and thinks they're recovered. Now, they're getting, you know, they get hit and they get another concussion. They think, okay, with just a minor impact, all that means is that one of their five systems, or more potentially one or more of their five systems, is not where it needs to be. So, there's still some dysfunction in the system. And any type of little stressor, little bump, you know, bad day at work, uh, you know, Financial stress, any of these things, a fight with their spouse can trigger an onslaught of all their symptoms again, because there's already dysfunction. And what they don't realize is that they're standing on the edge of a cliff and a little shove pushes them right back over the edge again. And so, that's what I'm going to talk about. So, it's the same reasons now, the five main reasons, obviously, you guys in this

program. You know, will know this and be familiar with this. Maybe some of our newer members may not, but the five main things that cause PCS are dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. Two is neuroinflammation and your gut and potentially hormone imbalances. Three, Visual and vestibular dysfunction, neck dysfunction, and five, mental health, right anxiety, depression, um, you know, psychogenic symptoms like thinking that things are concussion-related but they could be anxiety-related and you start to misattribute them to concussion or brain injury and that happens quite frequently. So let's think about it this way. So here is young, healthy you, you know, picture your, you know, 15-year-old self. You don't have any gut issues, you're young, you're healthy, you're vibrant, all this stuff, and you get a concussion. Well, concussion is a stressor, right? It's going to give you a shove and you're going towards the edge of the cliff, but guess what, you're still well away from that edge, right? And so this is not a big

deal right this is you just kind of gradually recover you know it takes you maybe a week maybe not even a couple days you're back to feeling normal and that is actually 70% of people that get concussed. And I think this number is so high because a lot of who we study are young healthy athletes and their bodies are a lot more resilient to this. You don't see a lot of young healthy athletes end up with persistent concussion symptoms particularly on their first concussion right unless there's some underlying issues that they're unaware of. Okay but what happens if you aren't as young and healthy as you know that person well maybe you have gut issues so that moves you a little bit closer to the edge of this Cliff. Maybe you have a little bit of underlying anxiety that you've had for you know years. Maybe you have some neck dysfunction already from either previous injuries previous concussions car accidents Whiplash whatever it may be. Maybe just have some ongoing neck dysfunction look how close you are now.

to the edge of the cliff. So now when you get a concussion, and I say this all the time, concussion injury is just a stressor, and your recovery to that stressor really depends on how healthy you were before the injury happened. How well were your systems functioning? How balanced was your autonomic nervous system? How much stress was in your life prior to concussion occurring? Because then when concussion stressor comes along and shoves you, you don't have anywhere to go but off that cliff. Now concussion is a big deal, right? And now we're taking notice of it, and you have a long way to go to get back to kind of feeling your normal. Now this is the PCS group, this is the 30, okay? So now we start going through recovery, right? You're in this program, you're trying to climb this hill, and um, you know, we're gradually kind of putting in work and things are getting better, and all of a sudden, uh-oh, you know, boom, what happens if we have a stressor now, right? What happens if we have another

little bump to our head. What happens if we try to go back to work, right? You're increasing stress on your system. What happens if we, um, you know, get in a fight with our spouse or have financial stress and burdens, and we're applying for disability, and we're involved in legal proceedings, and we're trying to make sure that we get coverage and everything else, we're trying to keep track of all of our appointments and all this stuff. Well, it makes it harder to climb that hill. And another little stressor, you know, let's call it a bump on the head, where you go, Oh my God, I just did this again, and now you're starting back over. Now, luckily for those that are in this program, have been doing these steps, you already know what the playbook is, right? And so it doesn't take you as long to get back on that, you know, cliff and start climbing, right? When you're first there, it can feel like a long time, but for most of the people in the program

once you've built up some resilience in that system, you're starting, not necessarily, you know, at Ground Zero. You're kind of building up. So, the good news is, it doesn't take you long, usually, to get back into it if you've already built some of the foundational elements that you need, right? If you've already balanced your autonomic nervous system, if you're eating healthy, and you don't have inflammation, and you've repaired your gut, and your, you know, sleep is mostly on point, you're not going to have the same level or degree of setback that somebody else who hasn't done that groundwork is going to have. Now, here's where most people get wrong, right? You get up to the tiptoe of this cliff, and you go, Okay, I feel good, I'm done, right? I've recovered, I'm feeling good. And a lot of people that have had concussions in the past and think that everything is good, and, Oh, I was feeling good for a while, they're actually just standing right at the edge of this cliff, the next stressor.

that comes along is going to shove them right off this cliff and back to square one, and they're going to think, oh, I got another concussion, and now I'm getting concussed with every little bump in the road, and it's actually just not the case. These are just, you know, stressors on the system. Your body maybe is still on edge, your nervous system maybe you still have activated neuroinflammation, uh, which is in your brain, and any little impact is going to activate that neuroinflammation to start going, Hey, where's the danger, where's the danger? I'm here, I'm still activated, you know, I still sense inflammation in the area, I gotta go clean this up. Symptoms come back, right? It's not that you've had another concussion, but you're just exacerbating. So here's the person standing here, my symptoms are gone, so I'm all better now, but they still have these issues under the surface, right? Autonomic inflammation, hormones, neck, all these potential issues, so any stressor comes along, right, a loud

noise you know bump at a party. A friend comes up, says, Hey man, I haven't seen you in forever, and gives you a slap on the back. Well, now all of a sudden everything comes back, and you think, Oh, I've just got another concussion, right? So what I want to get across to people is that if you have ongoing, you know, if this keeps happening to you, right? Every little bump sets you off, there's something going on under the surface, and you just need more resilience in your system. The work doesn't stop here, right? You need to keep building the resilience, get yourself as far away from that cliff, and make yourself harder to kill. Okay, that's kind of the quote from Jocko Willink. If you guys know him, he's like a former Navy SEAL guy, but he's all about, like, I train every day to make myself harder to kill. And that's kind of the idea, is that yes, you may get up on top of that cliff, and you may be feeling good now.

but you still got to do the work knowing that you've already fallen off that cliff once and landed in PCS land tells you that there's some dysfunction there. So just getting back on top of that plateau, maybe you feel good, maybe your symptoms are gone away or mostly gone away. That doesn't mean like, Okay, I'm just gonna go back and live my life, because you know you start drinking a little bit of alcohol again and all of a sudden your symptoms come back again. Well, why is that? Because there's still inflammation, your gut wasn't fully repaired, you didn't have the resilience to be able to tolerate, you know, introducing alcohol maybe to that level again, right? So you need to work your way back, and the work doesn't stop as soon as your symptoms go away. And that's just something to consider. So, you know, for those that are, you know, maybe went through a period of feeling really good and then all of a sudden had this setback, it's not necessarily another concussion. It could be if the

impact force was enough. But really, what it most likely was, is just you didn't have resilience in the system. So we're all at different places here. So if you are experiencing this type of thing, small impacts are setting you off, or um, you know, recreating your symptoms or causing anything like that, these are generally not additional concussions, right? Some people, like, I've had 15 concussions in the past two years, there's just no way. There's no way unless you're, uh, you know, a street fighter that's just going out every weekend and you know, going out crazy, there's just no way, right? So um, anyway, so what do you do, right? What do you do when this happens? Well, guess what, this is already The Playbook that you guys are familiar with, right? We need to make sure that we've built our base right, our foundation is the most important piece to this, right? A lot of people come into this program and they go, I'm just going to skip right ahead to the rehab because I want to know the

exercises, and I want to do that. I think it's a visual problem. I gotta go, and they don't do this work. So, those rehab exercises are likely to be quite ineffective, right? Doing rehab before you've built your base is likely to be quite ineffective for any of this stuff, but also you're basically just getting yourself to the tippy top of that cliff, and you haven't built the foundation. So, any little stressor is going to throw you right off that cliff. The most important piece of this entire program is all of this stuff, right? Calming down nervous system hyperarousal, decreasing inflammation, getting your kind of mindset right to be able to tolerate these stressors, and build the tools and foundation there that when these things happen, you can take a deep breath, and you know what to do, and you know how to flip the switch. You know you have the tools, you've built the skills, you have the knowledge. That's kind of what is needed in this um and you know diet, gut, sleep, hormones.

exercise all this stuff. It's the foundational stuff that's the most important to getting yourself resilient and away from the edge. You know, of that cliff. And you can actually think about it this way, right? So if you want to think about it this way, rather than climbing straight up the cliff, like back here, right? This is kind of what your, let's say, your first rodeo when you first fall off the cliff and you're doing the concussion fix program, or you're just kind of out there on your own, right? You're going straight up, trying to get to the top of that cliff. And I think, you know, thinking about it this way is that you have a more gradual slope to get up that cliff. And it's also makes it a lot harder to just fall off that cliff, because it's actually more of a gradual tumble down. And you kind of hit your base, and your base may be here. And if you hit your base here, your climb up is a lot easier than if you're coming straight down to the bottom of that, okay?

so if you want to think about it like that, this is how it works. But then when you get up there, the workload doesn't stop, right? You gotta kind of continue moving your way back to this part of the cliff, as far away as you possibly can, because then a minor stressor, a little impact, nothing else, you know, you don't have this type of, you know, symptom exacerbation. So I hope that makes sense. I know Nikki, you have another analogy that you've used in the past too, so we can kind of talk about that as well. Nikki uses a cup and analogy, which I think is also, you know, fitting, but this is something that I thought of, you know, just maybe a couple months ago, and I thought it's just like standing on the edge of a cliff. But anyway, that's what it is. I hope you guys like that. I hope that made sense, and I'll open it up now for any questions that people might have. Yeah, there's a few in the comments that I'll go through.

um, if I did rehab at the wrong time, well, I have to do it again when I get to the top of the triangle, possibly, um, possibly it may not, right. Sometimes we start rehab right away, and it's, and it's fine. We get, um, we can get rid of the initial kind of symptoms, uh, there, but there's still maybe some underlying issues, and it depends on how dysfunctional things were, you know, prior to that. Some people are pretty solid here, uh, and their issue is here, and so they can more quickly progress to rehab, right. So, it just depends on, on the individual. Can you speak about much how much alcohol is enough to damage if I have half a glass of red wine once or twice a month, will that be detrimental, again, it's, it's not, um, it's very individualistic, right, like if you have a lot of, you know, gut issues and a lot of gut permeability and you have dysbiosis and stuff, you know, any alcohol is potentially going to to make things a lot worse, uh, but if you are you

know you've done kind of the groundwork. You've healed the gut. The gut lining is more, you know, less permeable. Now you can probably tolerate, you know, a couple glasses of wine every, every couple days. You know, it just depends on where you are in your particular, you know, recovery case. When it comes to people that are first coming into the program, we recommend to completely avoid it because the chances are that if you have PCS, that your gut health is not where it needs to be, and alcohol is a toxin, right? So, it is a toxin, and it does, by itself, increase gut permeability, which, after concussion, within 24 to 48 hours after a concussion, excuse me, gut permeability increases, okay? So, we already know that. So, people that never had food sensitivities all of a sudden start experiencing stomach pain with certain foods. They become sensitive to gluten and dairy and things that they never were in the past. It's all from the concussion. It's because concussion causes increased gut permeability.

increased inflammation in the system. The gut bacteria switches, so even if you had a healthy balance of gut bacteria prior to, sometimes after concussion, it can switch where you have a proliferation of bad bacteria and a lessening of good bacteria. So, it just depends on the individual, how much, you know, work have you done, uh, is your gut in a good place, because alcohol is detrimental to gut health and to neuroinflammation, but if you are resilient, if this is you standing over here, then that's fine, you can do that great. Um, going back to when you're talking about the airplanes, along with pressure change, uh, going okay, and I'll just leave the video off there. After this, we went into discussions about flights and turbulence and whether or not that could cause, you know, more issues. We also talked about some of the other questions in previous, uh, topics that we were covering. So, I'll just leave the video there, but basically in a nutshell, right, you get your concussion, it's a pathophysiologic process that affects kind of how the brain

metabolizes things. If you haven't seen my previous videos, go back and check those out about what a concussion actually is and what drivers of persistent concussion symptoms there are. Basically, people that are having these small impacts causing setbacks and further concussions are just experiencing exacerbation of one or more of those five elements. So, the way to get it under control is to get those five elements under control. And if you need help doing that and you're not sure where to look and you've been looking everywhere, be sure to check out the Concussion Fix Program because it is literally a step-by-step guide to walk you through that concussion recovery pyramid. We start you right at the bottom and we build that foundation all the way up and help guide you through the entire process. And like I said in the past two and a half years, we've had probably 2500 people come through the program and 1500 people reaching full recovery, back to work, back to life, back to everything, even though they had symptoms for you.

know months to years so the process definitely uh works, and I would encourage you to check it out. Give it a try. It is by far the least expensive form of treatment that you could do, and it turns out probably one of the most effective. So I would encourage you to check it out. Hopefully you like this video. Again, be sure to like, thumbs up, and share this video with anyone you think might find it helpful. Thank you.

Help! I'm Getting Concussions Every Time I Bump My Head! Why and HOW you can STOP IT!

Help! I'm Getting Concussions Every Time I Bump My Head! Why and HOW you can STOP IT!

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