How Chinese Medicine Helped My Mother After Her Traumatic Brain Injury
This is a very personal blog post for me as my mother has been living with a traumatic brain injury for 10 years and what I’d like to share is how I used Chinese medicine in her recovery even in her earliest days after the accident. In April of 2011, I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time but visiting my brother in Missoula, Montana. Our dad called and said our mom fell down a set of stairs and had been life-flighted to the nearest trauma hospital in Cleveland Ohio. My brother and I were on a flight the next day, as well as my two sisters who were in other states. My mom had fractured her skull in several places including some of the bones of her ear and there was severe damage including bleeding and swelling to both frontal lobes of her brain. She was in the ICU on and off for about 2 weeks and in the hospital for a total 5 weeks. During that time, we all took turns visiting and I packed up my life in Portland and moved back to my childhood home to be the primary caregiver for my mom as well as help manage the household.
Immediately following the accident, she was....
minimally responsive. She recognized us, smiled, and said our names but was only saying one to three words at a time. She had fine motor movements of her hands, her neck and upper back muscles were in a hypertonic state (abnormally high muscle tone) and well as her arms and legs which were moving a lot. On day 6, she was unresponsive with eyes closed all day. Bloodwork found low sodium levels. I tried giving her acupressure using ear seeds (tiny seeds on tiny stickers) on several different points to try to get things moving, she felt some of them by moving that body part, but there was no change otherwise in her responsiveness. As the end of visiting hours were approaching and she’d been sleeping for about 24 hours, I began giving her acupressure at a point between the nose and upper lip, actually using my nail to apply more pressure than just my fingertip could. This point, named Ren Zhong (translated as ‘man’s middle,’) and delineated by acupuncturists as Governing Vessel or GV 26, is used to revive consciousness for coma or sudden loss of consciousness, among other actions and indications. She began moving her head back and forth and then came to, she opened one eye for the first time all day and looked at all of us while we spoke to her. We were able to say good night and that we loved her. Her eye welled up and a few tears dropped. She kept looking at us but didn’t say anything, then went back to sleep.
At that point, I had only been in practice one year and had already seen and assisted in some amazing healing and recoveries in the teaching clinic and in the first clinic where I worked as a licensed practitioner, but being able to revive my mom and allow our family to have some relief that night was one of the most powerful moments in my now 11 years of practice. I continued to give my mom acupuncture while I cared for her the summer I was home, but was more so caught up in bringing her to multiple appointments every week including physical and occupational therapy and other appointments with doctors, providing nourishing meals three times a day, and making sure she was taking some key supplements and Chinese herbs to help her brain and overall stamina. When she was hospitalized, we brought all her food and didn’t allow her to eat the hospital food provided, she wasn’t too keen on that food anyway, and I know this contributed to her recovery as well as having a family loving her back to health. Even early on, doctors said that given her injuries, her recovery was remarkable.
With any traumatic brain injury, a different version of the person will emerge, there will be some of the same and some new aspects of the person and an understanding of what part of the brain was affected and what that part controls will help in understanding this new version. At any stage of a TBI, Chinese medicine can be used on the path to recovery- including acupuncture, herbs, body work, nutrition and Qigong meditation- as it is important to keep nourishing the brain. This can be done from a deep level using Chinese medicine that takes into account the entirety of the person including the intelligence, memory, thinking and consciousness as well as the functioning and execution of other organs intricately connected with the brain.
Related Blog Posts
Fall Sports: Concussions and the Role of CranioSacral Therapy
Using CranioSacral Therapy to treat post-concussion syndrome.Read the Post
Benefits of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Traumatic Brain Injury
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has long been used for wound healing, decompression sickness, and carbon monoxide poisoning. However, recent research is starting to show how HBOT can help treat brain injuries including post-concussion, post stroke, PTSD, and traumatic brain injuries (TBI). According to the CDC, TBI is the leading cause of death and disability among…Read the Post
Craniosacral Therapy and Traumatic Brain Injury: Improvements in Memory, Cognition and Sleep.
Ten sessions of specific Cranio-sacral therapy resulted in a statistically greater reduction in pain intensity, and greater improvements in mechanical ROM, memory, physical reaction time, and duration of sleep in patients with post-concussion up to 3 months after the intervention. In a study conducted in 2014 and 2015, a team of physical therapists, osteopaths, and allied health professionals…Read the Post
The Ketogenic Diet for Traumatic Brain Injury
We keep hearing so much about the Ketogenic Diet, and there’s good reason for that! Being in a state of ketosis (where the body is burning ketones) can have many benefits, from healing chronic illness to improving overall performance. The keto diet, as it’s called, was originally studied and used to treat epilepsy. It was proven extremely effective but still not that commonly used until…Read the Post
Related Services
Acupuncture
Did you know that acupuncture has been shown to be more effective than conventional treatment for migraines, back and knee pain? Acupuncture is also the complementary therapy most recommended by medical doctors (M.D.'s), and is covered under more insurance plans than ever before. No other traditional healing method has ever earned as much world-wide success, recognition and support! Acupuncture…Acupuncture
Chinese Herbal Medicine
Desiring a healthier life may be your goal, but for you and millions others it can prove more challenging. You may feel that your immunity is low. You may be in a state of physiological, mental or emotional unrest. Or you may be faced with a more serious illness or chronic pain.Chinese Herbal Medicine
