Concussions have been a hot topic in the last couple of years as our understanding of both the short- and long-term effects in children has grown immensely. Medical researchers have continued to study concussion severity and recovery protocols in order to ensure patients get the best care, and oftentimes one of the main questions centers around when it’s best for an injured person to return to activity. Some believe returning to activity too quickly may leave a person susceptible to an even greater injury, but new research suggests activity can actually lead to improved recovery outcomes.
For their study, researchers tracked concussed children in nine hospitals throughout the country. More than 3,000 children were monitored for the study, and researchers tracked each child for a period of 28 days after the injury. Researchers were most interested in when children returned to some form of physical activity after their concussion. Interestingly, researchers found that children who returned to physical activity within seven days of injury were less likely to experience concussive symptoms at the 28-day mark than children who remained inactive for the first seven days after injury.
Concussions and Activity
The research showed that 28.7 percent of kids who took part in some form of physical activity within seven days of the initial injury reported exhibiting symptoms 28 days after injury, while 40.1 percent of kids who remained inactive for the first seven days said the same. The results suggest that kids who sustain an acute concussion could benefit from early physical activity, even if it’s just something light like aerobic or non-contact exercises.
“It was important that we found this; we were able to confirm this. We were not surprised,” said Dr. Roger Zemek, who helped lead the study. “We did hypothesize physical rehabilitation would work with concussion.”
While this research helps show a correlation, it stops short of proving that activity helps prevent concussion symptoms. It’s possible that the only reason kids did not partake in activity within seven days is because their concussion was more severe than others, which means their symptoms were more likely to linger for 28 days than kids with more minor concussions. Dr. Zemek has already begun the process of trying to draw more answers from the first study, as they plan to conduct a follow-up study in 2017 to try and determine the volume and timing of physical activity that could be recommended to help treat a concussion.
“We need to find that ‘just right’ Goldilocks recipe” when it comes to balancing activity and rest, Zemek concluded. “The nice thing about this study [is] it just reinforces that exercise is great medicine.”