Concussion Rehabilitation
A concussion occurs when a force causes the brain to move rapidly back and forth inside the skull, leading to a temporary “energy crisis” in brain cells. Rehabilitation focuses on managing this energy gap while addressing the secondary physical symptoms.
The “Symptom Bucket”
Physiotherapists categorize symptoms to target treatment:
Vestibular
Dizziness, poor balance or a feeling of being “spaced out”.
Ocular
Blurred vision, difficulty reading or sensitivity to light.
Cervical
Neck pain or stiffness (often occurring alongside the head impact).
Autonomic
Elevated heart rate, exercise intolerance or sleep disturbances.
How Physiotherapy Helps
Sub-Symptom Threshold Exercise
The old advice was “total rest.” Today, we use controlled aerobic exercise. After an initial 24–48 hours of rest, a PT will find your “sub-symptom threshold”—the heart rate at which you can exercise without flaring up symptoms—to improve blood flow to the brain and speed up recovery.
Vestibular & Ocular Therapy
If the “internal GPS” of your inner ear or eyes was disrupted, PTs use specific drills:
Gaze Stability: Keeping eyes fixed on a target while moving the head.
Saccades: Rapidly moving eyes between two different targets to improve focus and tracking.
Balance Retraining: Standing on varied surfaces to reconnect the brain with the body’s position in space.
Cervicogenic Treatment
Because it takes less force to strain the neck than it does to cause a concussion, almost every concussion involves a neck injury. Manual therapy, dry needling, and deep neck flexor strengthening are used to reduce “concussion-like” headaches coming from the cervical spine.