My brain is fine, well as far as I know. Now watching me get out of bed in the morning that is painful. I get up an extra hour earlier in order to be capable of functioning at PT, often take a scalding hot shower to loosen up, ice my back all day and a few other body parts. I am 51 and still playing the game at least part time; not to mention my job requires me to be just as fit as if I were still active duty. One of the reasons I exercise so hard is to prevent injuries a much as it is to stay in shape.
I have plenty of friends with head trauma issues, mainly die to IEDs etc. One of the projects my team works on is a blast gauge detector to determine not just the big ones where you know you brain was rattled, but all the little ones and the cumulative effect. Interesting when we presented our findings the civilians didn't grasp how important this would be for future Soldiers.
Neat. I’ve found it pretty difficult to discern injury from context with respect to ied proximity.
Eg, guy reports feeling disoriented after watching the Humvee in front of him turned over by an ied and thinks they may have felt a blast wave. No loss of consciousness. Tbi or scary situation?
In my data, there appears to be some distinction between loc and no loc events and, of course, repeated exposures.
Also, stress changes the brain. So, say you’re a medic and you go into a nasty areas and see a bunch of murdered children. You develop ptsd. Maybe you had tbis before that, maybe not. Is there a contribution? The longer ptsd is there, the longer the allostatic load is a problem. There’s data now showing dna methylation differences wth ptsd. Ie potentially accelerated physiological aging. But, what of subclinical trauma related stress?
In a recent civilian study, marriage quality at 7 years was associated with changes consistent with moving in the direction of metabolic syndrome.
I think figuring out variance accounted for in these scenarios is very challenging. There is potential for red herring effects (e.g., autism and vaccines).
Old people often develop problems with thinking and memory. I'm sure now, every old NFLer that does will blame it on their playing career. But, a lot of these guys would have developed problems with thinking anyway.
How to parse?
