How Exercise Influences TBI Recovery
August’s Reader’s Digest tells us that the No. 1 thing we can do for brain health is to get our hearts pumping. Quoted in the article “Mind Games,” Dr. Donald Stuss, a neuropsychologist, says “The best advice I can give to keep your brain healthy and young is aerobic exercise. Another doctor, Mark McDaniel, professor of psychology at St. Louis’s Washington U., adds, “I would suggest a combined program of aerobics and weight training. Studies show the best outcomes for those engaged in both types of exercise.”
Exercise is likely a contributor to what I consider my full recovery.
Fall term of my sophomore year of college there was a health clinic on campus, and, among other things, I had my body fat percentage estimated. The measurement was rough, depending on skin folds for its determination. The result was a scary number: I was over 30% fat, considered obese, though to look at me, you’d never guess. But I decided that even though I didn’t look unhealthy, I likely was. I started swimming at the YMCA on campus most every night, and for Christmas I asked for a jump rope.
I transferred schools in the middle of that school year, but I kept up my training habits: five days a week I trudged over to the PAC (physical activity center at the University of Dayton) through sun, snow, and rain. Twenty minutes of jumping rope every day followed by alternate days of thirty minutes swimming or thirty minutes lifting weights.
When I graduated, I gave up the routine and only exercised lackadaisically until November 1995 when a significant life event propelled me to start a regular exercise program once again, and almost a dozen years later, I still workout six or seven mornings a week.
I know I owe my recovery to many things:
Exercise is likely a contributor to what I consider my full recovery.
Fall term of my sophomore year of college there was a health clinic on campus, and, among other things, I had my body fat percentage estimated. The measurement was rough, depending on skin folds for its determination. The result was a scary number: I was over 30% fat, considered obese, though to look at me, you’d never guess. But I decided that even though I didn’t look unhealthy, I likely was. I started swimming at the YMCA on campus most every night, and for Christmas I asked for a jump rope.
I transferred schools in the middle of that school year, but I kept up my training habits: five days a week I trudged over to the PAC (physical activity center at the University of Dayton) through sun, snow, and rain. Twenty minutes of jumping rope every day followed by alternate days of thirty minutes swimming or thirty minutes lifting weights.
When I graduated, I gave up the routine and only exercised lackadaisically until November 1995 when a significant life event propelled me to start a regular exercise program once again, and almost a dozen years later, I still workout six or seven mornings a week.
I know I owe my recovery to many things:
- doctors
- therapists
- my mom giving me simple puzzles to solve right from the start of my re-consciousness
- prayers
- returning to school so soon
- teachers
- the social support of friends and family, and
- exercise.
Exercise benefits everyone but especially the TBI survivor.
posted by Elizabeth Evans Fryer at 6:32 AM
2 Comments:
As well as being an author, I make a living as a Personal Trainer and martial arts instructor. I have had first hand experience of exercise improving the life of people with a number of varying conditions, including certain conditions of mental health. All manner of physical and psychological conditions from depression and bi-polar disorder right through to chronic fatigue and Multiple Sclerosis are greatly benefitted by physical exercise. I'm sure that TBI is no exception. Plus, physical activity can delay, lessen or even prevent the onset of some of these conditions. Just more reasons for us all to keep ourselves in good shape.
Well said. I too believe that regular exercise continues to contribute to my healing tbi. sapphoq
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