Health region reminds people to keep brain safe

The brain is the most important organ you have, so keep it safe.

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With June being Brain Injury Awareness Month, the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region spoke about the importance of keeping your brain safe.

The society we live in where we have access to transportation such as cars, trucks, motorcycles, certainly collisions take place where not only the brain can be impacted but certainly the overall body as well, even resulting in fatalities, said Murray Wotherspoon, education and prevention co-ordinator in the area of brain injury prevention. The challenge around a brain injury is the brain doesnt heal itself like many other parts of the body.

He explained that preventing the injury from happening is one of the primary ways to maintain long-term brain health.

In the past there wasnt a lot of awareness about traumatic brain injuries and concussions while playing sports.

A concussion could be described as perhaps a shake-up of the brain, Wotherspoon said. It can be caused by a blow to the head or body and even though you dont see a large hole in the brain or a bump, the chemistry of the brain has been dramatically altered.

In respect to that, if an individual goes back into playing the particular sport, whether it be soccer or football going back in after having an initial concussion could result in a fatality, he added. The body could not sustain a second impact and as a result the chemistry and messaging capacity of the brain falls short of maintaining the messaging to the organs and things that maintain your overall wellbeing. That is one of the reasons we certainly like people to be more aware of maintaining proper care of their brain.

In recent years, studies have been done on the brains of former NHL and NFL players to see what the impacts of concussions could be.

They have discovered damage that is directly attributed to the series of impacts that took place over their playing of the sport, Wotherspoon said. Again, it main not be a serious impact that puts a player right out of the game but it has been shown by some recent studies that a series of less threatening or lesser impact blows to the head but multiplied many times creates damage to the brain as well.

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Health region reminds people to keep brain safe