I have seen many patients make a complete recovery from traumatic brain injury, even after years of suffering. The brain and the body are incredibly wise, and the brain will heal with the right kind of help.

If you are still suffering from the consequences of your concussion, chances are you have a bunch of confusing symptoms. You have headaches, dizziness, or fatigue. You have trouble sleeping and/or have problems with memory, balance, thinking and concentration. You are endlessly losing your keys and your phone. You are easily overwhelmed.

And if you’ve just had a brain injury, you may find it hard to ask for help. That’s because your symptoms often feel bizarre, confusing and unconnected. Your battered brain doesn’t work well enough to help you make sense of your distress. And, unlike a broken arm positioned at a weird angle, you look fine, making your suffering invisible to friends, family and bosses.

You are not invisible to me. After thirty-seven years of treating people who have sustained brain injuries, I recognize the subtle signs of your distress.

I see it in your confused face, as you struggle with light and noise sensitivities. Your body doesn’t look totally connected. I hear it in the flatness and tentativeness of your speech. You are embarrassed that you are making a fuss about what seems like nothing or that something that once seemed so easy for you is now so difficult. Like most people, you discount your symptoms.

Your physician must understand what went wrong to be able to address your real problems. This is not easy as your brain is an immensely complex and complicated wonder with more neurons and astrocytes than there are in the Milky Way. But a physician who understands the fundamentals of healing can apply them to even the most complicated systems.

1. To heal from brain injury, the battered brain must be put back in its proper place in the skull and its natural motion restored.

Fixing a battered brain is like setting a fractured ankle. As with a twisted ankle, trauma twists or shears the brain inside its bony home so it is no longer positioned properly in its rocklike fortress - causing it to repeatedly slam against the skull’s rough edges, putting strain on all the brain’s connections, and preventing it from healing properly.

2. To heal from brain injury, the body’s “fight or flight” reaction must be calmed and the autonomic nervous system brought back into balance.

Brain injury fires up the “fight or flight” reaction of the Autonomic Nervous System as the body marshals all its resources to protect and heal this critical organ. Researchers are learning what osteopaths have felt in the nervous system for almost a hundred years - the fight or flight reaction can stay fired up for years after a brain injury, causing havoc in every system in the body. To heal the brain, that over reaction has to be stopped.

3. To heal from brain injury, the brain’s mighty fluid flows must be restored.

Brain injury wreaks havoc with the brain’s life-giving fluid flows. Your brain is 73% water, it contains 400 miles of blood vessels, and it floats in an ocean of cerebral spinal fluid which protects, nurtures and cleanses it.