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"Concussion and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy" Hmm, it took me months to finally decide am going to write on this. Normally, I wouldn't have considered writing about Concussion ever but after I watched the movie "Concussions" by Will Smith, I saw the need to. Even with that, it still took a while for me to come up with this.
Concussion is also called mild Traumatic Brain Injury(mTBI), Minor Head Trauma, and Mild Head Injury(MHI) but whichever one you choose to call it does not really matter. It is a brain injury that leads to the temporal loss of the brain function. It comes with symptoms like mood changes, blurry vision, headache, and maybe symptoms like trouble with thinking and nausea might be inclusive too depends.
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Concussion is from the Latin word "Concutere" which means to shake violently. As concussion is, it is considered the most common and the least serious type of traumatic brain injury in the world. Just as the Latin interpretation which means to shake violently, you can get concussions from anything that makes your head shake quickly, violently back and forth. So, this means a fall, punch or even something you do daily can lead to a concussion. It's just the severity of the concussion that varies as some people can become unconscious due to a concussion and some might not even know they've had a concussion, how ironical...
I believe we all know our fragile our brain is. It has the spinal fluid around it but it has no distinct shock absorber and this is the reason, a little hit to the head can lead to a concussion. Intentionally, I put the gif up there to help people understand better. Let's take the container above as our skull, the water as the spinal fluid surrounding the brain, and an imaginary body as our brain. As the bottle is being shaken, would the water stop the body(imaginary brain) from hitting the container (skull)?? Of course not, not when the brain weight around 3 pounds. The same thing happens when our head shakes violently back and forth.
See for examples the rugby players, the football players, and boxers that might have to use their head in the sport, they are at great risks of concussion but does it mean anything to them?? A concussion isn't something serious but they fail to realize that concussion is just a phase or a pathway and it becomes something else when it gets too much. A little hit from a football pitch can be up to 100G while our brain is only able to resist just 60G of shock which means a single hit on a football pitch can lead to a concussion.
One thing that baffles me is that, we humans despite being the most developed creatures do not have a distinct shock absorber for our brain when there are lower animals that do. When I got to a point, I did a quick check on just two birds that mostly have a head contact with external forces to see what happens or perhaps how they survive concussions but to my surprise, they don't even have concussions because they have shock absorbers.
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I considered the cape gannet and the redhead woodpecker. These duo are great and perfect examples. The Cape gannet is a diving bird that collides with the face of the sea with great force and the redhead woodpecker is a bird that pecks the tree for about 12,000 times a day which means it approximately hits its head against a tree for about 12,000 times daily. This bird is capable of absorbing a G-force of 1000 compared to the 60G humans can absorb. This is possible because its tongue extends to the back of the mouth beyond the nostrils, and encircles its skull acting as a safety belt or a shock absorber for its brain- so there's no concussion when they suffer great hits to the head.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy:- Hmm... What more can I say? The end result of multiple, several and severe concussions. This is a progressive and long term neurodegenerative disease caused by suffering many hits to the head. It has same symptoms as concussion just that there's a risk of committing suicide in the stage. These symptoms don't even show up until years after multiple concussions.
The CTE is said to be very rare but of course, I don't support that because the symptoms of CTE only get to show up after years of multiple concussions and you can't even diagnose it while the victim is alive - It is only diagnosed in an autopsy by studying sections of the brain in a process called brain tissue analysis. Okay, maybe they've only been able to find out about a few people that died by CTE but what about people that died and probably didn't do an autopsy?? Well, you might have a different view on this, kindly drop your views in the comment section, thank you.
For CTE, there is currently no cure, so it is better prevented or avoided. The risk is greater for children who suffered concussions at a tender age (esp. below 12). The specialty of the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is that it brings about a cascading series of neurological occurrences that unleash killer proteins(also called Tau) to the brain. This killer proteins form clumps that spread throughout the brain killing its cells leading to loss of memory, difficulty with thinking, mood changes and probably feelings to take one's life. So, the image on the right above is as a result of the action of killer proteins on the brain.
That should be all for today, see you all later.
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ALL IMAGES WERE GOTTEN FROM PIXABAY, FLICKR AND WIKIMEDIA |
References:-
[Concussion-wikipedia] | [Chronic traumatic encephalopathy] | [Concussion-Webmd] | [Concussion-NHSinform] | [Concussion-Mayoclinic] | [Concussion-Healthline] | [What is CTE?-Concussion foundation] | [The science of CTE] | [CTE-mayoclinic] | [CTE- SPorts Medicine Reports] | [CTE-Karger]