Can The Brain Recover
After Injury? 

Brain injury can happen in any number of ways, from a fall, and bumping the head on something on the way, or a car accident, or from an attack. Whatever the cause of the brain trauma, there can be any number of health problems as a direct result, and all because the brain controls so many things for us. It is responsible for blood pressure and heart rate, for helping us move, think, image, and deals with the results of our senses, namely sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste.

Now, when the brain has been injured, brain cells are destroyed or at least damaged, and they are not able to recover from this as a general rule. When you consider the brain, its size, and what it controls, and then think of a computer and what it does, you can see quite easily that shaking one or the other will cause damage, sometimes irreparable damage.

However, despite this, in some cases after brain injury, other parts of the brain will compensate for the injured area, thus showing that in some cases, the brain can recovery from trauma. This means that for any injury, the amount of recovery of the brain is unknown at the time of injury, and in fact may not be known for months or in some cases even years after the brain injury. This is why we hear of "miracle cases" in which the medical profession have been totally wrong about the amount of recovery to expect from a brain injured person.

In some ways it is an advantage to not know how final the injury to the brain is. Because the brain is some times able to adjust and recovery from the injury, it means that there is often hope for at least a partial recovery of brain use, and that hope is very important. It can be the incentive to keep trying, and to never give up, and is valuable for relatives and caregivers, not just the brain injured person.

Never give up hope of recovery from a brain injury. The world is full of surprises, and hopefully your trust in recovery will help.