Concussion: breathing exercises and sports improve recovery

To help teenage victims of head shocks, for example while playing a sport, researchers came up with the idea of ​​testing the effects of breathing and aerobic exercises.

What are the symptoms of a concussion?

When a person is the victim of a violent blow to the head, various symptoms can appear and persist for several weeks: headaches, dizziness, memory and concentration problems, even in some people mood disorders. or depression.

For their study, the researchers studied a group of 30 teenagers, injured during sports and recreation. They all had symptoms for more than a month. These participants were divided into three groups and matched according to their age, sex, level of physical activity and body mass index. Researchers assessed concussion symptoms, heart rate variability, sleep, mood, and thinking and memory skills for all participants at the start of the study and again six weeks later.

During the study period,

• A first group practiced breathing exercises at a slow pace with a computer program for 20 minutes a night, four nights a week.
• A second group performed three aerobic training sessions per week, starting with 20 minutes of low-intensity aerobic activity, which gradually increased in intensity and duration.
• The third group did both breathing exercises and aerobic exercise.

Aerobic and breathing exercises improve symptoms

Results: Breathwork practice along with progressive aerobic exercise may help improve concussion symptoms in slowly recovering adolescents. The study found that while the two therapies are each beneficial separately, when combined they lead to even greater improvements in thinking and memory skills, depression and mood.

In detail, the authors noted that:

• Volunteers in the combined breathing exercises and aerobic exercise group experienced a two-fold reduction in symptom severity compared to those in the exercise group, as well as a 1.3-fold reduction in symptom severity compared to people in the breathing exercise alone group;
• Similarly, the combined group experienced a 1.2 times greater reduction in depression symptoms compared to the “aerobic exercise alone” group and a 1.3 times greater reduction than the breathing exercise alone group;
• The combined group also experienced a 1.4 times greater reduction in mood disturbance compared to the other two groups;
• Finally, the combined group had significantly greater improvements in attention and working memory, as well as greater changes in heart rate variability parameters than the other two groups.

Encouraging results that deserve confirmation

According to the author of this study, Professor Moore of the University of South Carolina at Columbia, “lManaging persistent concussion symptoms is particularly difficult because there are no standard therapies. These therapies are inexpensive, easy to implement, and can be self-administered, making them feasible and accessible to anyone with persistent symptoms.“.

However, the authors underline the limitation of their work, which did not include a control group of people who had not followed any exercise. Finally, they also believe that the current results are “preliminary and further studies are needed, including a larger number of people”.