05/19/2022
YOUNG CHILDREN ARE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO BRAIN INJURIES. CONCUSSIONS HAVE IMPLICATIONS BEYOND WHAT WAS REASONABLY REPORTED.
BY DR. C. J. ABRAHAM ([email protected]) MAY 19, 2022
Knocks to a child’s head when they fall or when they come in contact with another object is not uncommon. If not treated within a short period of time, they may have lasting effects.
Most recently, research was performed in the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden. They studied over one million people and analyzed the effect of receiving a traumatic brain injury in their first 25 years of life.
For anyone of the individuals in the study who experienced at least one traumatic brain injury, 9% of those injured were more likely to die early or be treated for psychiatric illness receiving a disability pension. Furthermore, they were less likely to have completed high school.
We do know that any child that receives a severe brain injury in a car accident, will experience much more educational obstacles in school than a young child who hasn’t. Even the mildest form of a brain injury will experience subsequent neurological problems in life especially after the age of 35. Many of those will experience not only neurological deficits but also Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cognizant problems, due to the bruising and cell damage that constantly deteriorates the healthy and functioning brain as a function of time.
Children who are 15 or older when they received a brain injury were substantially more likely to have all of those problems in adulthood.
Raising young children is not easy for parents. The children fall and hit their heads while learning to walk. They fall off activities and they get hit in the head in a lot of different ways around their residence.
In older children who are involved in collision sports, such as football, wearing helmets generally reduces severe head injuries such as skull fractures and hematomas (bleeding inside the skull). However, all of the helmets are ineffective against rotational forces that cause the head to turn rapidly and the brain to twist on itself. The soft headgear worn by Australian football players is essentially useless in protecting against brain injuries.
There is also a danger of not recognizing concussions on the sporting field which predisposes a player to a subsequent concussion at a much lower impact force than an individual who has had no prior concussive injuries. The effect of sub concussive brain injuries can be reviewed in my article titled “Your Body is Nothing Without a Brain.” The article can be found on Google.
It is also important to note that MRI and CT imaging can only recognize structural damage from an injury and nothing more. The only way to determine if there is a neurological injury to the brain is to use specialized imaging methods such as functional MRI (fMRI). It should also be noted that changes in patterns of brain activity are apparent, especially in the behavior of a young child at home and in school.
There is also evidence that innocuous hits on the head that do not qualify as a concussion but would qualify as a sub-concussive injury is additive and after a number of them that are received, the last one results in a full concussion. All this means that while the young children are receiving various sub-concussive injuries the brain continually deteriorates to a point where another small blow results in a full-blown traumatic brain injury.
Suggestion: It is always best to protect the most important and most valuable organ in a child’s body, their brain while they are growing up. There are protective headbands that have been on the market for the last 20 years that have been very successful in protecting children as well as adults. One is the ForceField Universal Protective Headband
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Dr. Abraham is the inventor of the ForceField FF Protective Sweatband and founder of Forcefield FF (NA), Ltd. He has over forty-five years of experience in evaluating head and brain protection for every sport played in the United States and Europe. (forcefieldheadbands.com)
As a result of Dr. Abraham’s participation in personal injury and litigation cases, many products have been made safer and have reduced the risk of injury to both children and adults throughout the world. (scientificadvisory.com)
The Forcefield FF Protective Headband Products have been recognized as the most universal headbands ever invented with over 20 different applications.
Dr. C. J. Abraham scientificadvisory.com ([email protected])
