Injury Recovery Quotes

Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.

Punishments include such things as flashbacks, flooding of unbearable emotions, painful body memories, flooding of memories in which the survivor perpetrated against others, self-harm, and suicide attempts.

We all have scars; both inside and out. Use your experience to support those who are going down the same road of destruction you once went down. Know that your past is worth more than the pain you once carried, because it can now be used to comfort and give strength to another soul who is suffering. Cherish your trials and tribulations as gifts; embrace these opportunities to share the grace you have been given.

How many mental health problems, from drug addiction to self-injurious behavior, start as attempts to cope with the unbearable physical pain of our emotions? If Darwin was right, the solution requires finding ways to help people alter the inner sensory landscape of their bodies. Until recently, this bidirectional communication between body and mind was largely ignored by Western science, even as it had long been central to traditional healing practices in many other parts of the world, notably in India and China. Today it is transforming our understanding of trauma and recovery.

May I document your recovery? It's such a devastating and fascinating injury.

There's a hard law, mejuffrou, that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.

To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own.

You are not sick You are injured

We need to talk about the hierarchy of grief. You hear it all the time—no grief is worse than any other. I don’t think that’s one bit true. There is a hierarchy of grief. Divorce is not the same as the death of a partner. Death of a grandparent is not the same as the death of a child. Losing your job is not the same as losing a limb. Here’s the thing: every loss is valid. And every loss is not the same. You can’t flatten the landscape of grief and say that everything is equal. It isn’t. It’s easier to see when we take it out of the intensely personal: stubbing your toe hurts. It totally hurts. For a moment, the pain can be all-consuming. You might even hobble for a while. Having your foot ripped off by a passing freight train hurts, too. Differently. The pain lasts longer. The injury needs recovery time, which may be uncertain or complicated. It affects and impacts your life moving forward. You can’t go back to the life you had before you became a one-footed person. No one would say these two injuries are exactly the same.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery. On the other hand—and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand—once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.

Individuality is deeply imbued in us from the very start, at the neuronal level. Even at a motor level, researchers have shown, an infant does not follow a set pattern of learning to walk or how to reach for something. Each baby experiments with different ways of reaching for objects and over the course of several months discovers or selects his own motor solutions. When we try to envisage the neural basis of such individual learning, we might imagine a "population" of movements (and their neural correlates) being strengthened or pruned away by experience. Similar considerations arise with regard to recover and rehabilitation after strokes and other injuries. There are no rules; there is no prescribed path of recovery; every patient must discover or create his own motor and perceptual patterns, his own solutions to the challenges that face him; and it is the function of a sensitive therapist to help him in this. And in its broadest sense, neural Darwinism implies that we are destined, whether we wish it or not, to a life of particularity and self-development, to make our own individual paths through life.

Mental illness is no different than a heart condition. In the same way a faulty valve can cause harm to the body and require medication and care, so does a malfunctioning brain. Insanity is a crude, culturally loaded term setting the sufferer apart in a way which will not aid the patient’s recovery. The way we regard those whose brains hinder them with fault or injury is a prejudice, not a diagnosis.” Dr. North

Further evidence for the pathogenic role of dissociation has come from a largescale clinical and community study of traumatized people conducted by a task force of the American Psychiatric Association. In this study, people who reported having dissociative symptoms were also quite likely to develop persistent somatic symptoms for which no physical cause could be found. They also frequently engaged in self-destructive attacks on their own bodies. The results of these investigations validate the century-old insight that traumatized people relive in their bodies the moments of terror that they can not describe in words. Dissociation appears to be the mechanism by which intense sensory and emotional experiences are disconnected from the social domain of language and memory, the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced.

When human beings are ill, they often make a show of their injuries and parade them so that others may see and give them sympathy. It is just the reverse with an animal living in its natural state. Asking no sympathy, deeming rather that weakness of any kind is something to be ashamed of, it crawls away into some hidden corner and there, alone, it awaits the outcome – either recovery or death.

Emotionally, I was just a mess. But it’s such a long recovery period that you have to come to terms with it. You can’t cry the whole time until you get back on the field.

Accept your injury. There are thousands of people who are dealing with the same injury. You are not the only one.

Three things happen when you apologize sincerely. First, you acknowledge someone’s anger or sadness. You validate that they have reason to be angry or that their anger is real. This often disarms them. Research shows that, after the apology, they no longer see you as a threat or as someone who might again harm them. They drop their defensive posture. And finally, when you’re successful, their brain prepares to forgive. They may even be able to move on from the source of injury entirely. Beverly Engel, a psychotherapist who specializes in trauma recovery, writes in her book The Power of Apology, “While an apology cannot undo harmful past actions, if done sincerely and effectively, it can undo the negative effects of those actions.

To my mind, every emergency room should have a low-intensity laser for people with stroke or head trauma. This therapy would be especially important for head injuries, because there is no effective drug therapy for traumatic brain injury. Uri Oron has also shown that low-intensity laser light can reduce scar formation in animals that have had heart attacks; perhaps lasers should be used in emergency rooms for cardiac

She hadn’t been Rachel that night. She was evidence, a body of things to be picked and probed at, pictured and asked about, recorded and quoted. I want my life back. The voice was faint inside her own mind. She could hear the plaintive, almost despairing note to that voice. Like the wail of a scared child, this wasn’t just about facing her fears. This was about everything. Her injuries, the loss of the life and world she’d once taken for granted, her long recovery.

When the tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former follies. A mind disarmed of its rage feels no pleasure in contemplating a frantic quarrel. Sickness of thought, the sure consequence of conduct like yours, leaves no ability for enjoyment, no relish for resentment; and though, like a man in a fit, you feel not the injury of the struggle, nor distinguish between strength and disease, the weakness will nevertheless be proportioned to the violence, and the sense of pain increase with the recovery.

A major push is under way to figure out the molecular basis of those "critical" or "sensitive" periods, to figure out how the brain changes as certain learning abilities come and go. In some, if not all, of those mammals that have the alternating stripes in the visual cortex known as ocular dominance columns, those columns can be adjusted early in development, but not in adulthood. A juvenile monkey that has one eye covered for an extended period of time can gradually readjust its brain wiring to favor the open eye; an adult monkey cannot adjust its wiring. At the end of a critical period, a set of sticky sugar-protein hybrids known as proteoglycans condenses into a tight net around the dendrites and cell bodies of some of the relevant neurons, and in so doing those proteoglycans appear to impede axons that would otherwise be wriggling around as part of the process of readjusting the ocular dominance columns; no wriggling, no learning. In a 2002 study with rats, Italian neuroscientist Tommaso Pizzorusso and his colleagues dissolved the excess proteoglycans with an antiproteoglycan enzyme known as "chABC," and in so doing managed to reopen the critical period. After the chABC treatment, even adult rats could recalibrate their ocular dominance columns. ChABC probably won't help us learn second languages anytime soon, but its antiproteoglycan function may have important medical implications in the not-too-distant future. Another 2002 study, also with rats, showed that chABC can also promote functional recovery after spinal cord injury.

In one of the few memoirs of self-injury, Caroline Kettlewell describes her recovery in terms of neural pathways—the “groove” worn into her mind, the “wrong turns and dark corridors” marked by her history of cutting. Once she learns how to stand “the awful agony of unhappiness” without reverting to the bodily jolt of broken skin, she changes the map of psychological struggle in her mind. “[E]very time I gut it through and survive,” she concludes, “I’m reshaping the structure and the chemistry of my thoughts, wearing new paths less tortured and convoluted than the old ones.”   Cutting

Wall and Melzack showed how a chronic injury not only makes the cells in the pain system fire more easily but can also cause our pain maps to enlarge their “receptive field” (the area of the body’s surface that they map for), so that we begin to feel pain over a larger area of our body’s surface. This was happening to Moskowitz, whose neck pain was spreading to both sides of his neck. Wall and Melzack also showed that as maps enlarge, pain signals in one map can “spill” into adjacent pain maps. Then we may develop referred pain, when we are hurt in one body part but feel the pain in another, some distance away.

As the third evening approached, Gabriel looked up blearily as two people entered the room. His parents. The sight of them infused him with relief. At the same time, their presence unlatched all the wretched emotion he'd kept battened down until this moment. Disciplining his breathing, he stood awkwardly, his limbs stiff from spending hours on the hard chair. His father came to him first, pulling him close for a crushing hug and ruffling his hair before going to the bedside. His mother was next, embracing him with her familiar tenderness and strength. She was the one he'd always gone to first whenever he'd done something wrong, knowing she would never condemn or criticize, even when he deserved it. She was a source of endless kindness, the one to whom he could entrust his worst thoughts and fears. "I promised nothing would ever harm her," Gabriel said against her hair, his voice cracking. Evie's gentle hands patted his back. "I took my eyes off her when I shouldn't have," he went on. "Mrs. Black approached her after the play- I pulled the bitch aside, and I was too distracted to notice-" He stopped talking and cleared his throat harshly, trying not to choke on emotion. Evie waited until he calmed himself before saying quietly, "You remember when I told you about the time your f-father was badly injured because of me?" "That wasn't because of you," Sebastian said irritably from the bedside. "Evie, have you harbored that absurd idea for all these years?" "It's the most terrible feeling in the world," Evie murmured to Gabriel. "But it's not your fault, and trying not to make it so won't help either of you. Dearest boy, are you listening to me?" Keeping his face pressed against her hair, Gabriel shook his head. "Pandora won't blame you for what happened," Evie told him, "any more than your father blamed me." "Neither of you are to blame for anything," his father said, "except for annoying me with this nonsense. Obviously the only person to blame for this poor girl's injury is the woman who attempted to skewer her like a pinioned duck." He straightened the covers over Pandora, bent to kiss her forehead gently, and sat in the bedside chair. "My son... guilt, in proper measure, can be a useful emotion. However, when indulged to excess it becomes self-defeating, and even worse, tedious." Stretching out his long legs, he crossed them negligently. "There's no reason to tear yourself to pieces worrying about Pandora. She's going to make a full recovery." "You're a doctor now?" Gabriel asked sardonically, although some of the weight of grief and worry lifted at his father's confident pronouncement. "I daresay I've seen enough illness and injuries in my time, stabbings included, to predict the outcome accurately. Besides, I know the spirit of this girl. She'll recover." "I agree," Evie said firmly. Letting out a shuddering sigh, Gabriel tightened his arms around her. After a long moment, he heard his mother say ruefully, "Sometimes I miss the days when I could solve any of my children's problems with a nap and a biscuit." "A nap and a biscuit wouldn't hurt this one at the moment," Sebastian commented dryly. "Gabriel, go find a proper bed and rest for a few hours. We'll watch over your little fox cub.

The concept of “brain plasticity” refers to the ongoing capacity of the brain and the nervous system to change itself. Everything that we do, think, feel, and experience changes our brain. A stroke or a traumatic brain injury can affect brain plasticity, and plasticity may also be associated with such developmental disorders as autism. Increased brain plasticity may also potentially endow a person with unanticipated new abilities, as John appears to have experienced in this book. TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation, the intervention that John undergoes, provides a unique opportunity for us to learn about the mechanisms of plasticity, and to identify alterations in the brain’s networks that may be responsible for a patient’s problematic symptoms, and also for recovery.

episodes are due to psychiatric illness, and the nature of the episodes is often embarrassing. A potentially violent or injurious episode often leads to evaluation. Yet effective medical treatments are now available—actually a number of them—such as medication and hypnosis. The key is finding a sleep medicine professional experienced in the diagnosis and management of sleepwalking and sleep terrors. Sleepwalking and sleep terrors affected every part of Ms. Frazier’s life. They put her safety, her very life, at risk and threatened the safety of those close to her. Sleepwalker: The Mysterious Makings and Recovery of a Somnambulist is an accurate

the greatest risks lie at very low and very high training loads. “A training spike on a very low chronic load is a perfect storm for injury,” he says, but “if you have a high training load we know you’re protected—to a point. A super high load? Maybe not.” The key, he says, is consistency.

Whether you’re icing an injury to reduce swelling or cooling a sore muscle to tame inflammation, the approach won’t work, Reinl says, because icing merely slows blood flow to the area, it doesn’t halt it indefinitely. Once the icing stops and the blood flow returns to normal, whatever process you were trying to hinder will proceed again. The swelling will continue and the inflammation will start. The only thing you did was delay things. On this matter, Reinl managed to sway Mirkin, who wrote, in a foreword to Iced!, “Gary Reinl has done more than anyone else to show that cooling and immobilization delay recovery.

You can recovery from any injury.

The emerging picture was dramatic: the brain’s representations of the body, of movements, and of sounds are all shaped by experience. Our brain is marked by the life we lead and retains the footprints of the experiences we have had and the behaviors we have engaged in. “These idiosyncratic features of cortical representation,” Merzenich said in a model of understatement, “have been largely ignored by cortical electrophysiologists.” As early as 1990 Merzenich was floating a trial balloon: maybe, just maybe, the behaviorally based cortical reorganization he was documenting supported functional recovery after brain injury such as that caused by a stroke, which until then (and to some extent, even now) was attributed to entirely different causes.

Ed Taub had shown that the more stroke patients concentrated on their tasks—the more they paid attention—the greater their functional reorganization and recovery. In stroke patients who sustain damage to the prefrontal cortex, and whose attention systems are therefore impaired, recovery is much less likely. Two months after the stroke, a simple measure of attention, such as the patient’s ability to count tones presented through headphones, predicts almost uncannily how well the patient will recover motor function. The power of attention, that is, determines whether a stroke patient will remain incapacitated or not. Ian Robertson’s research group at Trinity College found much the same thing: “How well people can pay attention just after a right-brain stroke predicts how well they can use their left hands two years later.” If the attention circuits in the frontal lobes are damaged by the stroke, the patient recovers less well from injury to other regions of the brain than if the frontal lobes are spared.

In my twenties, when I was in medical school and still training hard, lifting weights almost daily, I experienced a mysterious back injury that required two separate surgeries (one of which was botched), followed by a long and very difficult recovery. For several months I was almost unable to function, surviving on large amounts of pain-killers. I couldn’t even brush my teeth without excruciating back pain, and I spent most of the day just lying on the floor. It got so bad that my mom had to fly out to Palo Alto and take care of me. The thing is, people think it’s terrible when someone in their twenties has to go through this (and it is), yet they almost expect it for someone Sophie’s age.

Years ago, I received a call from a paramedic I had known for a long, long time. He was a true believer; a provider in it to do good more than to do well. By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was in some serious trouble. His voice did not lie. He was. It seemed that some years earlier he had suffered an injury off the job. The injury resulted in several surgeries and months of painful recovery, physical rehabilitation, and pain medicine. It started as an as-needed remedy for intense pain but before long became a physical necessity. When the actual pain no longer necessitated the monthly refills, the feigned pain took over. When that excuse had run its course, new injuries and favors from friends took over. The cycle had begun. Back at work, he became adept at leading his double life; on the job he was clean, sober, and clear-headed, but off-duty the pills took over. The decline was slow, but steady. It would not be long before he would lose all control. One day, on a call with the entire crew, he found himself in the home of a patient whose medicine cupboard was a veritable treasure trove of pain killing goodies. Jackpot! While logging all of the medicines, it was easy to drop a full bottle of a certain pain killer into his pocket, and he did…completely undetected. The patient was transported, and the scene was cleared, and his addiction would be fed for a little while longer. Nobody would ever know. However, as he exited the scene with his supervisor, he was struck with a blunt and harsh realization: This is not who I am and it’s not who I want to be! While still at the curbside, in front of the patient’s home, he pulled the bottle from his pocket, handed it to his supervisor, and admitted sincerely: “I have a problem. I need help.” His supervisor considered the heartfelt and painfully honest plea for help, but the paramedic was summarily fired from a job where he had an impeccable record of exemplary service for nearly two decades. He was stripped of his Paramedic license and reported to local authorities and was charged with multiple felonies by the District Attorney. That was the response from his supervisor and the rest of the morally superior lemmings up the chain of command. He asked for help, and they fucked him…because they were afraid of what actually helping him might look like to the outside world. Not once was he offered treatment or an ounce of compassion. He asked for help; now he was looking at serious prison time. This brings us to the frightened and helpless tone in his voice when he called me. Thankfully, his story ends with the proper treatment: A new career and the entire criminal case being dismissed (he had a great lawyer). Unfortunately, similar stories continue to play out in agencies, both public and private, all across America and they do not, or will not, end so well.

On the grand scale, I still had more marbles in my bag than most unimpaired folks, which is nice, I suppose. But it doesn’t account for my loss. Discounts my loss, actually. I’m somewhere on the bell curve outside the sympathy line. But I notice the loss. No, I live with the loss. I used to be smarter. I used to be a doctor. Now I’m a low-spark doctor. And I remember who I used to be and how I performed. There is devastating loss here for me.

HEALTH HACK #5: Infrared and Red Light Therapy Red and infrared light have been found to be effective tools for muscle recovery and pain relief, with the potential to treat inflammation and play a role in detoxification and treatment for other kinds of illness and injury. This cutting-edge technology is now available in the form of compact lamps for home use.

you can build significant muscle, strength, and joint integrity in as little as two days per week. The key is using the right exercises, repetition tempos, and recovery periods to create consistent, positive adaptations.

I’m no doctor. But I do think between the sun and the fresh air, being that close to nature is a smart place to start. What you fuel your body with during any kind of recovery is going to play a role in how successful you are,” he continued. “You can’t fight an injury or a disease as efficiently on fast food and soda as you can with plants and healthy grains and water.

For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the reverse of such a creature. Among other things my proof of this is, that I always instinctively select the proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily health is low; whereas the decadent, as such, invariably chooses those remedies which are bad for him. As a whole I was sound, but in certain details I was a decadent. That energy with which I sentenced myself to absolute solitude, and to a severance from all those conditions in life to which I had grown accustomed; my discipline of myself, and my refusal to allow myself to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and to be doctored—all this betrays the absolute certainty of my instincts respecting what at that time was most needful to me. I placed myself in my own hands, I restored myself to health: the first condition of success in such an undertaking, as every physiologist will admit, is that at bottom a man should be sound. An intrinsically morbid nature cannot become healthy. On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound nature, illness may even constitute a powerful stimulus to life, to a surplus of life. It is in this light that I now regard the long period of illness that I endured: it seemed as if I had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I tasted all good things and even trifles in a way in which it was not easy for others to taste them—out of my Will to Health and to Life I made my philosophy.... For this should be thoroughly understood; it was during those years in which my vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from being a pessimist: the instinct of self-recovery forbade my holding to a philosophy of poverty and desperation. Now, by what signs are Nature's lucky strokes recognised among men? They are recognised by the fact that any such lucky stroke gladdens our senses; that he is carved from one integral block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant as well. He enjoys that only which is good for him; his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of that which is good for him are overstepped. He divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage; that which does not kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively gathers his material from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a selective principle; he rejects much. He is always in his own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with natural scenery; he honours the things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him—he tests the approaching stimulus; he would not dream of meeting it half-way. He believes neither in "ill-luck" nor "guilt"; he can digest himself and others; he knows how to forget—he is strong enough to make everything turn to his own advantage. Lo then! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for he whom I have just described is none other than myself.

Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of resentment—who knows how very much after all I am indebted to my long illness for these two things? The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have experienced both through his strength and through his weakness, If illness and weakness are to be charged with anything at all, it is with the fact that when they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes decayed. He knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to terms with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything wounds him. People and things draw importunately near, all experiences strike deep, memory is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy—I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow. To accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more—to cease entirely from reacting.... The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for death, but which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute a self-preservative measure, amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of will to hibernate. A few steps farther in this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for weeks in a tomb.... Owing to the fact that one would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for revenge, the concoction of every sort of poison—this is surely the most injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else—it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching—this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself—conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness-with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of "free will" (my conflict with Christianity is only a particular instance of it), will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my moments of decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of the above feelings, because they were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden, but this time because they were beneath me.

To maximize the rate of glycogen synthesis, consume 0.7 grams of simple carbohydrates (sugar, preferably glucose) per pound of body weight within 30 minutes after your run and every two hours for four to six hours.

It makes sense that running on soft surfaces like grass would be better than roads, but studies have not borne that out,” Dr. Price says.

A team from Sydney, Australia, has lowered levels of these proteins using light. They implanted human genes associated with Alzheimer’s into mouse DNA, so that the animals developed abnormal tau proteins and amyloid plaques. Then they treated them for a month with low-level light therapy, simply by holding the light one to two centimeters above the animals’ heads. Using the same spectrum of near-infrared light that has helped in traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease, and retinal damage, they lowered both the pathological tau proteins and the amyloid plaques by 70 percent in key brain areas that Alzheimer’s affects. Thereafter signs of “rusting” decreased, and the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells, improved their function.

Some introductory books on neurofeedback: J. Robbins, A Symphony in the Brain: The Evolution of the New Brain Wave Biofeedback (New York: Grove Press, 2000); M. Thompson and L. Thompson, The Neurofeedback Book: An Introduction to Basic Concepts in Applied Psychophysiology (Wheat Ridge, CO: Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2003); S. Larsen, The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 2006); S. Larsen, The Neurofeedback Solution: How to Treat Autism, ADHD, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Stroke, PTSD, and More (Toronto: Healing Arts Press, 2012).

Dr. Margaret Naeser and colleagues from Harvard, MIT, and Boston University, including Harvard professor Michael Hamblin, a world leader in understanding how light therapy works at the cellular level. Hamblin, at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Wellman Center for Photomedicine, specializes in the use of light to activate the immune system in treating cancer and cardiac disease; he was now branching out into its use for brain injuries. Building on lab work that applied laser therapy to the top of the head (transcranial laser therapy), the Boston group had studied its use in traumatic brain injury and found laser treatment helpful. Naeser, a research professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, had done studies using lasers for stroke and paralysis and was one of several pioneers using “laser acupuncture” by placing light on acupuncture points.

THE SECOND SPEAKER, ANITA SALTMARCHE, focused specifically on studies of light therapy used for traumatic brain injury, stroke, and depression.

brain and other nerve-related problems such as headaches from concussions, vascular dementia (dementia caused by blood vessel problems in the brain), migraines, Bell’s palsy (a paralysis of the facial nerve), and tinnitus (ringing of the ears). He emphasized he was influenced by research that had been done in Israel on light therapy and the brain. Dr. Shimon Rochkind, a neurosurgeon at Tel Aviv University, originally pioneered work using lasers to treat injuries in the peripheral nervous system, that is, all the nerves in the body except those in the brain and spinal cord. Injury to peripheral nerves can lead to problems sensing or moving.

Similar considerations arise with regard to recovery and rehabilitation after strokes and other injuries. There are no rules; there is no prescribed path of recovery; every patient must discover or create his own motor and perceptual patterns, his own solutions to the challenges that face him; and it is the function of a sensitive therapist to help him in this. And

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. —Psalm 147:3 (NIV) It had been more than a year since our son Paul was in a car accident, an accident so brutal it severely injured all involved—and killed a passenger in the other car. Paul’s physical recovery was amazing, given the extent of his neck injuries. Within three months, he was back at the office, driving two hours round-trip to work, and working out in the gym. However, Elba and I wondered how he was doing emotionally. We were constantly praying, “Lord, help our son express his emotions from the accident. Heal him on the inside as well.” One evening, I inquired how the civil case was going. “Paul, did you call the lawyer?” “No,” he replied. I pressed on: “You know, it is important that you call him and stay up to date on this matter.” I sensed his lack of interest in the topic. I persisted: “Paul, you need to be responsible and reach out to him.” The look in his eyes told me that I had crossed the line. Standing tall with tears in his eyes and anger in his voice, he said, “I just want this thing to be over with.” His mom quickly responded, “Paul, we know that you are struggling and want to put all of this behind you. How can we help you?” There was a long pause. He finally answered, sharing his feelings for the first time since the accident, grieving for everyone affected—particularly the deceased. Our prayers were answered: We now knew how much Paul had been hurting. This was the beginning of his emotional healing. Lord, heal my hurts, especially those deep within me, unknown to those around me. —Pablo Diaz Digging Deeper: Ps 103:2–4; Jer 17:14

Just as the discoveries of medication and surgery led to therapies to relieve a staggering number of conditions, so does the discovery of neuroplasticity. The reader will find cases, many very detailed, that may be relevant to someone who has, or cares for someone who has experienced, chronic pain, stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain damage, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, autism, attention deficit disorder, a learning disorder (including dyslexia), a sensory processing disorder, a developmental delay, a part of the brain missing, Down syndrome, or certain kinds of blindness, among others.

Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.” —Luke 6:35 (NLT) The late-night call to the hospital twisted my stomach into a hard knot. Danny, a strong, passionate college student studying for ministry, had been in an accident. He lay in a medically induced coma, survival uncertain. I was one of his teachers. I rushed to the hospital and joined his friends. Danny’s parents had not yet arrived; they faced an agonizing four-hour drive. As we waited, we pieced together the tragic story. Danny had seen a homeless man begging on the side of the road. He sensed God’s whisper to feed him; the fast-food gift certificates he had in his pocket would be perfect. While turning his car around, he was T-boned by a pickup truck. His girlfriend suffered minor injuries; the other driver wasn’t hurt, but Danny now fought for his life. We waited and prayed and tried to comfort his parents when they arrived. The waiting stretched into days. Danny’s father, however, was not content with waiting. He had a mission. The day after the accident, he drove to the fast-food joint, loaded up with food, drove to that fateful place, and finished the task his son had begun. While his son lay in a coma, Danny’s father fed that same homeless man who would never fathom the cost of his meal; God’s boundless compassion, disguised as fast food. Danny’s recovery was slow but strong. I saw him recently, working on campus. He waved. He'd just gotten married. Danny, by his life and through his family, has become my teacher. Heavenly Father, grant me grace to press through my heartaches to a place of total forgiveness, supernatural love, and abundant life. —Bill Giovannetti Digging Deeper: Jn 15:4; Eph 4:32; Jas 2:8

Ingla and Txiki set out a plan for the rest of the season which saw them working and consulting simultaneously with both Rijkaard and Pep, talking about players, injuries and recoveries and principally how to shake up the working model of the club. The primary goal was to professionalise the first team.

Stretching can and should be implemented in later phases of tendinopathy recovery, but not while the tendon is still reactive and painful.

This chapter expands on that, focusing on how you can leverage collagen synthesis to speed up recovery from injuries, improve mobility, and build resilient, pain-free joints.

Tendinopathy recovery requires patience and discipline. You will likely experience some setbacks on your road to full recovery. During these times, take a step back and use the EdUReP model to correct course and prevent the injury from degrading further.

A useful framework for thinking about tendinopathy recovery is the EdUReP model.90 EdUReP stands for Education, Unloading, Reloading, Prevention:

However, when recovery is not adequate, or the tendon damage is too severe, the tendinopathy injury process begins.

It’s an important concept to understand because it directly impacts injury recovery time, tissue repair quality, future injury risk, and overall joint mobility.

Preworkout recommendation: To increase collagen synthesis, tissue regeneration, and joint recovery, supplement with 5–10 grams of collagen protein 30–60 minutes before exercise. Choose a supplement that lists “hydrolyzed collagen,” “collagen hydrolysate,” or “collagen peptides” to mirror the supplements proven effective in studies. Adding 100–200 mg of vitamin C to your preworkout routine further supports tissue repair and healing rates. Type II collagen supplements appear to be preferentially effective at reducing cartilage inflammation in dosages as low as 10 mg per day.161 For added joint inflammation support, you could also supplement with type II collagen immediately before training.

Just as overtraining causes tendon degeneration from lack of recovery, undertraining leads to reduced connective tissue load capacity and reactive tendinopathy. Consistent, intense training is the best way to prevent injury.171, 172

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Rehabilitation is an equalizing process. No one much cares what you did before; they’re focused on what you can do now and how you can learn to live independently once again. Going from an acute hospital to a rehabilitation environment represents what current sociological jargon calls a “paradigm shift”: at an acute hospital, you are sick and being taken care of. But once you arrive at a good rehab hospital like Magee, you go from being a passive patient to becoming an active participant in your own recovery.

The key is in complementing traditional strength and conditioning training with muscle pliability. Pliable muscles are softer, longer, and more resilient: they help insulate the body against injury and accelerate post-injury recovery.

The first few moments after an injury are important. As soon as possible, we should acknowledge that we are hurt. Recognizing our injury is not a defeat, but rather shows courage. If we ignore an injury, recovery could take longer.

TO HEAL THE GUT, LIGAMENTS, TENDONS, AND SKIN: The peptide BPC-157 may promote speedier recovery from ligament tear reconstruction and rotator cuff tendon injuries. As we’ve already mentioned, this peptide has shown outstanding results in treating debilitating gut problems. I found that out firsthand after my bout with mercury poisoning, which does brutal things to the body. BPC-157 was one of the tools I used to help rebuild my gut, and it was extraordinarily effective. 5. TO INCREASE MUSCLE MASS, STRENGTHEN BONES, REVITALIZE SKIN, AND RESTORE YOUTHFUL METABOLISM: The two peptides sermorelin and tesamorelin mimic the action of growth hormone–releasing hormone (GHRH), a hotbed for new drug development. GHRHs stimulate the pituitary gland to secrete natural growth hormone. They’re a lot cheaper than synthetic human growth hormone (HGH)—and, unlike HGH, can be legally prescribed off-label. What’s the downside? If you take growth hormone or these peptides, you should be aware that growth hormone elevates levels of insulin-like growth factor-1, which has been shown in some studies to have “a modest association” with cancer risk.9 So it’s critical that you work closely with your physician to determine what options are best based on your symptoms, blood work, and careful monitoring.

Vitamin D3 boasts a strong safety profile, along with broad and deep evidence that links it to brain, metabolic, cardiovascular, muscle, bone, lung, and immune health. New and emerging research suggests that vitamin D supplements may also slow down our epigenetic/biological aging.29, 30 2. Omega-3 fish oil: Over the last thirty years or so, the typical Western diet has added more and more pro-inflammatory omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids versus anti-inflammatory omega-3 PUFAs. Over the same period, we’ve seen an associated rise in chronic inflammatory diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. 31 Rich in omega-3s, fish oil is another incredibly versatile nutraceutical tool with multi-pronged benefits from head to toe. By restoring a healthier PUFA ratio, it especially helps your brain and heart. Regular consumption of fatty fish like salmon has been linked to a lower risk of congestive heart failure, coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and stroke.32 In an observational study, omega-3 fish oil supplementation was also associated with a slower biological clock.33 3. Magnesium deficiency affects more than 45 percent of the U.S. population. Supplements can help us maintain brain and cardiovascular health, normal blood pressure, and healthy blood sugar metabolism. They may also reduce inflammation and help activate our vitamin D. 4. Vitamin K1/K2 supports blood clotting, heart/ blood vessel health, and bone health.34 5. Choline supplements with brain bioavailability, such as CDP-Choline, citicoline, or alpha-GPC, can boost your body’s storehouse of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and possibly support liver and brain function, while protecting it from age-related insults.35 6. Creatine: This one may surprise you, since it’s often associated with serious athletes and fitness buffs. But according to Dr. Lopez, it’s “a bona fide arrow in my longevity nutraceutical quiver for most individuals, and especially older adults.” As a coauthor of a 2017 paper by the International Society for Sports Nutrition, Dr. Lopez, along with contributors, stated that creatine not only enhances recovery, muscle mass, and strength in connection with exercise, but also protects against age-related muscle loss and various forms of brain injury.36 There’s even some evidence that creatine may boost our immune function and fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Generally well tolerated, creatine has a strong safety profile at a daily dose of three to five grams.37 7.

Karen Davison is an experienced Nurse who works in a busy hospital in Plano. She has been employed here for around a decade and has helped countless patients with recovery from injury and illness.

This mask is attached to pure oxygen, which is thought to be very beneficial to someone suffering a diving injury, and to their chances of recovery,” Dave recited. “I suggest you breathe the oxygen, but the choice is entirely yours.

I’m half titanium now. They had to rebuild my face and the left side of my lower body. I had a shattered pelvis, broken femur—” He went on, listing the injuries to his leg and pelvis. The placement of rods and screws the doctors had used to put him back together. My chest ached as he spoke robotically about his surgeries and the initial recovery process. Maybe that was the only way he could talk about it. It was so much. Too much.

Accidents happen to people every day. If you were hurt because of someone else’s carelessness, you have rights and you may be entitled to compensation for your losses. The personal injury claim process can be difficult to navigate and there are pitfalls that can sink your case. Insurance companies use everything in their power to limit the value of your claim and minimize your recovery. That is where we come in.

This gives a whole new meaning to ‘family mobbing.’ According to author and survivor, Stephanie A. Sellers, Ph.D, who wrote the book, Daughters Healing from Family Mobbing: Stories and Approaches to Recovery from Shunning, Aggression, and Family Violence, “Family Mobbing is a group act of aggression that targets a family member. It can be typified by a single act of violence or a pattern of abuse over years. Whether isolated or long-term, mobbing enforces the family’s domination and control over another. As family members continue to tyrannize their target, the aggressive group may expand to include friends, neighbors, business associates, and clergy. Family Mobbing encompasses varied acts of aggression that cannot be understood by examining one motivation or cause. The pattern of behavior always isolates one family member and inflicts as much emotional pain as possible. Unlike sibling rivalry, the intention is to establish superiority or to provoke fear and distress. Factors to consider include the motives, the degree of severity, a power of imbalance, victimization element, physical injuries, and trauma.

Load training (a.k.a. resistance training) is the most effective lever for resolving joint pain and building a resilient body. Everything else—stretching, foam rolling, manual therapy, massage, flossing, smashing, taping, cracking, and popping—is secondary. You can spend hours each week on extraneous soft tissue and recovery work, but if you don’t effectively utilize load training, you won’t get the relief you’re looking for.

Shame is an emotion that many rape survivors struggle with for reasons that can be more complicated than we might think. It is a distinctly insidious form of humiliation, the result of a serious injury to our self-esteem, which can be exacerbated by the feeling that we’ve done something wrong. Humiliation is par for the course when your body is used sexually against your will—that part of the aftermath of sexual violence is pretty well understood. Less well appreciated is why rape survivors may end up feeling responsible for what has happened to them. A common assumption is that women blame themselves because of low self-esteem: if only I had dressed differently, if only I had not looked at him that way, if only I had made better decisions for myself. While a woman’s self-image may play a role in how she comes to understand what has happened to her, the sense of responsibility held by many rape survivors is at least partly driven by a dominant worldview regarding personal safety and harm. Although this picture is slowly changing, historically, at least in the West, girls have been taught from a young age that the world is basically a safe place and that so long as you are sufficiently careful and intelligent, you can protect yourself from any serious harm. Underscoring this narrative is the fact that in our entertainment-saturated media culture, the everydayness of sexual violence against women is overlooked in favour of sensationalized stories of extreme violence. And because rape is typically experienced in private, unlike other traumatic experiences, like combat fighting in war, for instance, the clear evidence of its pervasiveness is obscured from our collective vision. This further reinforces the mistaken notion that the world is a benign place for women—and worse, it makes incidents of sexual violence against women look like a series of unrelated, isolated events when in fact they are the systematic consequence of patriarchal social structures. So how does the rape survivor reconcile this dominant worldview with what has happened to her? After all, it cannot be true both that the world is a safe place and that you were raped, unless, of course, the rape was your fault. The other alternative is to reject the dominant worldview, but this means accepting the fact that we live in a world where women, by virtue of being women, are at risk. For a variety of reasons, it can be easier and less painful to believe instead that being raped was a result of your own poor choices.

The idea of stretching to improve flexibility has fallen out of favor in much of the fitness world, and for good reason. A vast body of research on injury recovery, athletic performance, and pain management has obliterated nearly every argument for stretching in the traditional sense. But many people, even fitness professionals, are sticking to their guns—stretching daily, despite any measurable benefits, and recommending their clients do the same.

In white water rafting, riders battle waves, heavy rapids, and unpredictable drops. They have to hustle hard to avoid obstacles, respond quickly to changing river conditions, and paddle with all of their strength to safely reach their destination. These heart-pounding bursts of strenuous activity are punctuated by periods of rest, when the water becomes calm enough that riders can float and enjoy the scenery. As any experienced river guide will tell you, the ideal trip is comprised of both hustle and floating—a balance between focused exertion and intentional recovery. Too much hustle leads to exhaustion that can jeopardize the split-second decision-making that’s needed to avoid injury. Too much float will result in a boring and aimless ride, devoid of challenge or purpose.

Similar considerations arise with regard to recovery and rehabilitation after strokes and other injuries. There are no rules; there is no prescribed path of recovery; every patient must discover or create his own motor and perceptual patterns, his own solutions to the challenges that face him; and it is the function of a sensitive therapist to help him in this.

In my experience, moving on is part of healing. Think of it like physical therapy during rehabilitation for an injury. You start to use the muscles again while they’re healing, but you have to take it slow and build the strength back before you can make a full recovery. The heart’s a muscle. Did you forget that already?” I laughed. “Are we talking about matters of the heart in doctor-speak?” “Why not? This is our shared language. We could use a golfing metaphor if that works better for you.” I laughed. “That would play more to my strengths.” He chuckled then leaned in, grasping my arm. “All joking aside, you’re my son and I’m your dad. Every other way in which we’re related is secondary. So think about that when I tell you that you have the potential to be a better surgeon than me. But nothing would make me prouder than if you became a better husband and father.

An injured man would heal in time, and his pain would gradually diminish and ultimately disappear, because injury was a part of the human condition. A man was born to be hurt from time to time, and the mechanism for recovery was born with him.

In rehabilitation there is no elevator. You have to take every step meaning one step at a time.

Are you unbonded? Has your ability to be vulnerable, to be needy, to trust been disrupted? Do you find yourself devaluing safe people? If so, you may need to find a healing setting like a recovery-based church or a counselor to deal with your bonding injuries. 2.

Somehow Frank got word to the dingo enclosure. “You’d better get to the compound,” came the message. “Graham grabbed Wes.” I felt cold chills go down my arms into my fingers. Graham was a large enough crocodile that he could easily kill prey the size of a man. I struggled through the water toward the compound. This is a nightmare, I thought. It felt like a bad dream, trying desperately to run in the waist-deep water, and yet feeling like I was in slow motion, struggling my way forward. When I got to the compound, I was shocked. Wes was conscious and standing up. I had a look at his wounds. The gaping holes torn out of his bottom and the back of his leg were horrifying. Both wounds were bigger than my fist. He was badly torn up. We discussed whether or not to call an ambulance, and then decided we would take Wes to the hospital ourselves. Wes was fluctuating between feeling euphorically happy to be alive and lashing out in anger. He was going into shock and had lost a lot of blood. Steve drove. A trip that would normally have taken half an hour took less than twenty minutes. The emergency room was having a busy night. By now Wes’s face was somewhere between pale and gray--the pain was well and truly setting in. We explained to a nurse that he needed help immediately, but because we had a blanket over him to keep him warm, the severity of his injuries didn’t really hit home. Finally the nurse peeked under the blanket. She gasped. Wes was so terribly injured, I was worried that he would still bleed out. Steve and I were both very emotional. So many thoughts went through our heads. Why Wes? Why hadn’t Steve been grabbed? What kind of chance was it that Graham had grabbed Wes in probably the only manner that would not have killed him instantly? We realized again how much we loved Wes. The thought that we almost lost him terrified us. It was a horrible, emotional Friday night. Over the course of the weekend we learned that Wes would probably make a full recovery. He would keep his leg and probably regain most movement. There was still some doubt as to whether he was going to need skin grafts. Steve laid his life on the line to defend Wes. And as severely injured as Wes was, he stopped at the top of the fence to turn back and help Steve. That was mateship; that was love. It made me think of the line from scripture: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Steve and Wes were lucky, for they were truly friends.