Dealing with a brain injury can be tough - you're through a mental disaster while you try to keep up with your surroundings. During this time, you will face severe psychological and physical enigma that'll seem to influence your everyday behavior.
As a matter of fact, you'll be experiencing constant loss of consciousness, nausea, temporary memory loss, and alterations in your mental state. This can be quite difficult to overcome. During such times of total despair, exercise can help brain injury patients in recovering from their injury faster than they would expect.
According to experts, exercising is as important for quick recovery from brain injury as is a healthy brain diet or harmonious sleep. But how so? Don’t worry, let’s discuss how exercise can help improve brain injury.
Proven Results of Exercise On Brain Injury
Exercise plays an important role in diminishing brain injury and facilitating faster recovery from it. Not only that, it helps to shape a brain injury patient's lifestyle and can help the patient accommodate to the changes in the routine and in the lifestyle. Other than that, exercise has proven results on several human body functions. Let's go through these and look into how exercise truly helps shape a patient's recovery.
Cardiovascular System
Exercise can help increase the body’s relaxation response time (parasympathetic) that helps to regulate the elevated heart rate and blood pressure. Regular exercises are essential in maintaining continuous blood flow to the brain and other vital parts of the human body. This helps in catering important nutrients to the brain aiding in the faster recovery from brain injury and enhanced brain functioning.
Sleep
Sleep is an integral part of brain injury rehabilitation; it’s something that helps the brain recoup its capabilities. Brain Injury can lead to sleep disorders, Moderate intensity exercise has improved self-reported sleep quality among adults, and it shows signs of sleep onset latency, the efficiency of sleep and deep sleep within younger adults. Exercise also helps in regular sleeping patterns and effective sleep cycles as well.
Brain Cognition
Regular exercises can vastly improve the brain’s cognition function and reduce the fatigue endured after brain injury or TBI. Exercise has also been proven to decrease brain tissue loss, lowered risks of dementia and delayed onset of age-related decline in brain function.
In addition, exercise can affect neurotransmitters within the brain. The transmission fluid in the brain after intense exercise was increased, making the impulses from the brain travel faster from one nerve to another. This phenomenon can help you process information faster and can even boost mood and memory!
Furthermore, regular exercise activates neuroplasticity. The neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to replenish itself after brain injury. According to numerous studies, the increased blood flow within the brain cells is accountable for the increased volume of gray matter (neurons) and white matter (connections between neurons) within the brain. Whenever these are increased, brain injury rehab works fast and smooth!
Psychiatric Conditions
Exercise can also enhance the mental conditions of the brain and help with decreased incidence of depression and anxiety disorders. In fact, regular exercise helps to improve the mood and emotions in patients suffering from brain concussions.
Is exercise safe for TBI patients?
For most TBI patients, it might seem that exercise is too much work and is not safe for them. However, it’s proven that more than 90 percent of patients suffering from TBI are physically able to exercise. Most people avoid exercising as to not making the symptoms worse or from the depressions after the brain injury.
However, the claims above are totally false! Healthy body transpires to a healthy mind; the significance is vast! During exercise, mental and physical stimuli are vital for quick and effective recovery from brain injury.
Final Thoughts
Exercise is presumed to be one of the most effective ways to help brain injury rehabilitation. It helps in pumping more blood into the brain, which in turn means that your brain receives more nutrition thus facilitating faster recovery.
Regular exercise is also proven to improve sleep and mental health conditions, which are vital for brain injury recovery. Moreover, exercise can help enhance the cognitive functions of the brain by inducing more neurotransmitters and neuroplasticity within the brain.
Not only that, exercise can help in physical fitness as well. It ensures that you’re physically and mentally fit for the day, and helps in overall mental and physical performance over the long run.
We hope that you’ve benefited from this article and understood the importance of exercise and how it improves brain injury. If you’re to fully recover from your brain injury conditions, it’s more advisable you consult with a brain rehabilitation center like Sports Outreach where we use scientific methodology to treat patients with brain injury! Visit our website to learn more.