TBI Ages the Brain According to New Study

Dr. James Cole of the Imperial College London published an important paper on TBI and brain aging in the April 2015 issue of the Annals of Neurology. Prior to the study Dr. Cole and colleagues developed a computer program to track normal aging of the human brain using MRI images. After age 40 normal adults show a general decline in white matter thickness as well as thinning of grey matter in specific areas of the brain. For the study Dr. Cole did MRI brain scans on 99 people who had suffered varying levels of TB from one month to 46 years post injury. What he found was that normal controls have zero difference between their chronological age and predicted brain age, whereas in the TBI group the subject’s brains appeared an average of 5 years older than their chronological age. Dr. Cole said the difference between chronologic and actual brain age (based on MRI imaging of brain tissue) is much greater for people with more severe TBIs. He also said the study shows that the effects of TBI on brain health and tissue size go on for years after the initial injury.

As people age their brains undergo what is called “oxidative stress” from normal metabolism. This can produce the equivalent of rust in the brain with increased risk of degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Although supplement producers charge high prices for the over-the-counter pills which they claim will protect your brain from bio-chemical rusting, their claims have not been proven. Why not eat or drink natural foods that have been proven to get anti-oxidant molecules into your brain? In the Feb. 3, 2015 issue of the The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition In-Young Choi, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology at KU Medical Center, and Debra Sullivan, Ph.D., professor and chair of dietetics and nutrition at KU Medical Center, published a joint article on the benefits of milk in preventing degenerative brain disease in elderly people. They had 60 older people take a brain scan after quizzing them on what they recently ate and drank. They found that the people who regularly drank milk had the highest levels of glutathione in their brains. Why is this important? Glutathione is an extremely powerful anti-oxidant proven to protect the brain from metabolic rust.

Choi’s team found that people who equaled or exceed the 3 recommended servings of dairy per day had the highest levels of glutathione. Their next study is scan the brains of people who do and do not drink much milk to compare the level of cell damage from metabolic rust in their brains.

Severe cerebral vasospasm, or severe narrowing of blood vessels, is a very dangerous complication observed in children with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) which tends to go undetected and untreated. That is because it generally begins 4-5 days post brain injury, and because many physicians who care for brain injured children are not aware of this condition. The great importance of monitoring for vasospasm in children with moderate to severe TBI was highlighted in a paper just published in Critical Care Medicine by Nicole O’Brien and co-investigators at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Dr. O’Brien says the presence of certain factors increase the odds that a child with TBI will experience vasospasm: being in a motor vehicle accident; higher severity of injury score; lower Glasgow Coma Scale score; and fever at time of hospital admission. Vasospasm is more prevalent in and has a worse outcome in children with severe TBI as opposed to those with moderate TBI. To prevent the worst consequences of vasospasm it is crucial to diagnosis and treat it immediately.

In the November 6, 2014 online issue of PLOS Computational Biology Dr. Samuel Gershman and colleagues published a new theory of human memory formation based on testing a quantitative model on human volunteers. The theory states that humans will modify an existing memory to keep track of small, gradual changes in their environment, but they will create a brand new memory when they perceive a sudden, significant change in their environment. The key part of the brain operative in the cognitive assessment process and the memory modification vs. formation process is the hippocampus in the temporal lobe. This study explains why people with brain damage to the hippocampal area have considerable difficulty with forming new memories.

Women who drink alcohol excessively and who suffer from chronic insomnia are at high risk of suicide according to a study by Michael Nadorff, PhD and colleagues at Mississippi State University which was published in the December 2014 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. One possible reason is that feeling hopeless about ever getting a decent night’s sleep can trigger depression which makes a lethal cocktail (no pun intended) when combined with alcoholism. Since insomnia is a very common consequence of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and people with insomnia are inclined to drink in hopes of getting to sleep, this is something that females with TBI need to guard against. If you are a female with TBI who is suffering insomnia and has begun drinking alcohol to cope, then you should see your doctor and try other means of getting a good night’s sleep.