Reduce Cognitive Activities After Concussion to Recover Quicker: Study

Teens with concussions should reduce their cognitive activities such as reading, doing homework, to recover faster, a latest study suggests.

For the study, researchers tested 335 children and youngsters, aged between 8 and 23 years, for 21 months. These participants visited a sports concussion clinic in Boston, reported CBC News.

The authors found that those involved in mental activities such as homework, playing console, solving crossword puzzles, text messaging and other online activities recovered an average 100 days after concussion. Those who rested their brain activities recovered in just 20 to 50 days.

"Those who were doing milder levels of cognitive activity recovered at about the same rate as those who were doing minimal levels," study co-author William Meehan, director of research for the Brain Injury Center at Boston Children's Hospital and director of the Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention said, according to the USA Today.

David Hovda, a professor of neurosurgery and director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California, explained NBC News that when the brain suffers a strong jerk, it experiences a sort of mini-seizure. "All the cells fire and the brain needs an enormous amount of fuel to equilibrate," he explained. "The brain is then exhausted so it shuts down and becomes very quiet. If you activate the brain during the time it's trying to shut itself down, it will activate, but that will make recovery much more prolonged."

Although, expert have been emphasizing the fact that giving brain a rest after concussion could help faster recovery, but there was no experiential evidence.

Concussion can have serious effects on students. It can hamper their overall performance. "For concussion, especially for student athletes, it can dramatically affect their ability to perform in school and it causes a lot more distress than other injuries," said William Meehan III, director of the Sports Concussion Clinic at Boston Children's Hospital and co-author of the research.