Categories: Concussions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In 2011, I fell 20 feet from a rooftop water tower scaffolding. My head struck a steel beam on the way down before crashing onto the concrete rooftop below. I was immediately rushed to the hospital and put on life support. While in a coma, an MRI revealed a severe diffuse axonal injury (DAI), which is one of the most devastating types of brain injury. Statistically…
over 90 percent of patients with this brain injury never regain consciousness, and most of those who do will often remain in a persistent vegetative state.
My recovery journey began after finally waking from a 12-day coma before serious complications arose with the need to induce a second coma. In the following months, I endured severe brain fog, memory loss, breathing problems, in coordination with the left side of my body (my left hand was completely flexed inward), and…
I didn’t eat, walk, or talk for months.
Following the acute stages of my brain injury, a dense brain fog, limited mobility, and numerous other difficulties persisted as I continued to navigate the physical and emotional toll of my new circumstances. At a pivotal moment, I was introduced to functional medicine, which illuminated for me a different way of looking at recovery. As several treatments, exercises, and therapies were implemented…
I began to reclaim the mental clarity I had before my injury.
An enormous amount of work and therapy played in my rehabilitation as I worked to regain everyday faculties. As I relearned how to live.
I utilized this regained clarity and dove into the study, contacting practitioners of many different specialties, locally and internationally, in order to better understand how I could optimize my own recovery.
I now drive, ride bikes, camp, play guitar, sing, and even practice martial arts!
Throughout my recovery, I have been invited to several medical conferences, including the International Conference on Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, where I ended up giving an impromptu speech to a room filled with hundreds of health practitioners and medical students. Subsequently, I have found myself on stage as the keynote speaker for several nationally recognized organizations and have presented to hundreds of health practitioners as guest health and medical expert.
With their expertise playing a monumental role in my recovery…
I have been working with doctors, nutritionists, professors, and dieticians, to put together resources to help and guide others.
After my injury, I did not know if I’d ever recovered enough to lead a “normal life,” but I vowed that if I did get better, I would work to share the most effective tools that I found throughout recovery.
I am honored to share with you the nutritional tools that I found to be most useful for neurological health.
Whether we want to support normal brain function or to give our brains the best shot to repair, we must supply the ingredients.
