TBI Strategies

08/18/2026

I asked Claude (AI) to research this for me:

Best three things abstaining from alcohol does for my brain and body. I’m 20 years dealing with a traumatic brain injury, and my neurologist called alcohol a neuro toxin.
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Claude:

Given a TBI, this makes a lot of sense — injured brains are more vulnerable to alcohol’s effects, not less. Here are the three biggest ones:

1. Better neuroinflammation control.

A TBI leaves the brain in a longer-term inflammatory state as it heals. Alcohol independently triggers neuroinflammation and oxidative stress, so removing it lowers the total inflammatory load your brain is carrying — which matters for both symptom management and long-term recovery.

2. Improved sleep architecture.

Alcohol fragments sleep and suppresses REM and deep slow-wave sleep — the exact stages the brain relies on for clearing metabolic waste (via the glymphatic system) and consolidating memory. TBI already disrupts sleep for a lot of people, so cutting alcohol removes a second hit to the same system.

3. Reduced seizure and cognitive-symptom risk.

TBI lowers seizure threshold, and alcohol (especially withdrawal after drinking) can lower it further. Abstaining also avoids compounding common post-TBI issues like headaches, balance problems, mood instability, and slowed processing speed — alcohol worsens all of these acutely, even in small amounts.

One more worth mentioning: your neurologist’s “neurotoxin” framing is accurate terminology, not just a strong warning — ethanol has direct neurotoxic effects on cell membranes and neurotransmission, which is part of why brains with existing injury are less able to buffer it.

05/17/2025

https://apple.news/AmZRzq5E7QlWPi2z9fTduog

Modifying rules and grouping players by size rather than age can limit the risks

04/10/2025

10/03/2024

This short article is so important for parents of young boys who want to play football.

Nobody wants to be a Danny Downer but the concussion problem in youth football is an inevitable outcome of the sport, whether it’s the dramatic highlight reel of a blindside hit or the crashing into each other play after play at the front line. That in fact is where most of the damage happens, and the crashing goes on all week during practice.

And we wonder why so many of them have trouble concentrating on schoolwork, make really bad lifestyle decisions or feel depressed or angry.

I remember reading the local paper about 5 years ago, and high school players were asked: What do you like about playing football?

Two of them said, I like to hit people.

And the guys they like hitting are the sons of the parents in the stands of the opposing team.

It is that time on year when newspapers all over the country are fed, and publish misleading information about the safety of youth tackle football. The problem is, they deliberately fail to tell us (and parents that need to know) the rest of the story. They leave readers with the mistaken impression...

09/22/2024

Well September 21 has come and gone and it was sobering, as it has been since 2005. Nineteen years ago was the car crash on Route 495 in Massachusetts with my middle son Andrew, hit from behind by a maniac out joyriding in his brother’s gold Mercedes. Both cars were totaled. Andrew broke three vertebrae in his back and lives with pain. I sustained a so-called mild TBI (traumatic brain injury) that took a few days to unravel and manifest with some intensity.

I’m not philosophical enough or enlightened enough to thank God for what happened. That might be in the cards for me yet, the way my friend and comrade Pamela Leigh Richards with the titanium plate in her skull refers to “the gift of my fall.” She’s been a real inspiration, and I wonder if I’ll ever get that far along, to be able to say “the gift of the crash.”

Here is SOME good that has come of it, but I’m not ready to stack up the pros next to the cons in comparison and say it was worth it quite yet, the “collateral damage” being what it was:

==> The 2012 book (pictured here), 5 years in the writing, with my co-author Laura Ricard, PhD, featuring the Brain Injury Recovery Team Model

==> TBI Strategies

==> The BISON Foundation (exciting things happening, designing a new hospital with a specialty in Neurotrauma Rehabilitation)

The friends I made and included in my book who helped me immeasurably include:

Elizabeth Thyng Montanaro
Michelle Domey
Marrilee Wilson
Thomas Lavoie (and Arthur Friedman!)
The late Matt Sweeney
Nicole M. Godaire and Marilyn P. Spivack (BIA of Massachusetts)
Diana Meloni (then wife of case study Gregg Meloni)
Ross Zafonte DO at Spaulding Rehabilitation
(Other members of my recovery team are not on FB)
(If I’ve forgotten someone … sorry! The list of friends since the book came out is a lot longer.)

07/16/2024

I live in Kansas so we all know about the occasional tornadoes, but nobody warned me about the sharks. Anyway, I’m surviving those too. In fact, they’re on the run. They underestimated me.

07/16/2024

Proposing a new measure for distance: one apple.

On two different nights I left my apartment for a walk, and I began eating an apple 🍎 as I left. After I finished eating it I threw the core into the same bush about three blocks away.

The new measure would sound like this:

So instead of saying, “See you later, I’m going three blocks away!” you’d say, “See you later, I’m going an apple away!” And everybody would know what you meant.

For longer distances you could say this:

“See you later, I’m going about 11 apples away so it might be awhile before I get back!”

04/23/2024

Living among the Amish in Pennsylvania. I might turn over my phone and launch new initiatives for The BISON Foundation here, I had the time of my life last night.