USA Hockey Magazine

March 2013

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By Rosemarie Moser Rest Is Best The Fastest Way To Get Back In The Game After A Concussion Is To Take It Slow 26 march. 2013 USAHOCKEYMAGAZINE.COM H eidi Taggart was a 15-year-old goalie when she was hit in the head by a teammate's stick during warm ups. Immediately she began to feel the classic symptoms of a concussion – headache, disorientation and dizziness. The next morning she was scheduled to take a required ACT Plan test at her school. Despite displaying the symptoms of a concussion, Taggart was not excused from taking the test by the school nurse. Her mother, Dorothy Bedford, advised Heidi to simply skip the exam, but the tenth grade honors student didn't want an unexcused absence. And she didn't want to take more time off from school with midterms coming up, so she continued to work her brain. In hindsight, Bedford realizes, "These choices made her injury worse and her recovery more difficult." What Heidi really "needed was complete physical and cognitive rest." As Heidi and her mother soon learned, the athlete's motto, "No pain, no gain," is not true when it comes to concussions. There is now scientific evidence that a period of comprehensive physical and cognitive (mental) rest can improve concussion symptoms dramatically. A recent study conducted at the Sports Concussion Center of New Jersey and published in the Journal of Pediatrics shows that even when rest is prescribed months after a concussion, the benefits were just as strong as if the rest period was taken right after the concussion. We understand that if you break your arm, you put it in a cast and don't use it. But, if you hurt your brain, you can't stop using it. It works 24 hours a day, directing all your physical and mental functions. The best you can do is reduce the amount of work your brain does by resting, so it can heal. A concussion is a traumatic brain injury that occurs when there is a strong force to the head or body, such as a whiplash, that causes the brain's delicate neural network to stretch, twist, and hit the inside of the skull. As a result, the brain's biochemical balance can go haywire and any of a variety of symptoms can occur such as headache, blurred vision, poor balance, dizziness, Photos By IStockphoto; Rosemarie Moser

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