What happens if your hypothalamus is injured

The only one who dealt with that was my acupuncturist. One would think I was out of shape, but as soon as my physiotherapist gave me the green light and exercises, I was moving. Fast forward to SARS.

My psychiatrist no, not the lying-on-the-couch-yakking type, but the head-injury-care type was at Baycrest. Me and the old folks lined up to have our temperature taken before being let into the facility for our regular appointments. I noticed my temp was higher than normal but not at minimal fever level, so I was always let in.

That same year, my GP tried once again to have a cardiologist look at my heart. Echo was fine, Holter was fine well, yeah heart rate a bit fast , blood pressure seemed OK.

Because of the crimp SARS put into regular medical care, nothing ever happened because I was banned from entering the hospital where my cardiologist worked. Fast forward to It is an exhausting, amazing treatment for the cognitive aspects of a brain injury, things such as concentration, memory, writing, reading, persistence, stamina, emotional stability, open awareness, etc. They started doing HRV heart rate variability work at the beginning of my treatment sessions.

The idea was to relax the body and mind, get the heart rate rising and falling in sync with deep breathing, before commencing treatment. The thing was my HRV looked like someone having a spastic attack when trying to draw a sine curve or had simply lain down flat. I had read that there was some hypothesis that in people with brain injuries, if you put the emphasis on cognitive rehabilitation, then the physical body suffers or cannot heal as well.

That might explain what happened next. In early , I had an extreme water retention reaction: the inside of my mouth swelled up.

I went to the ER. The person who accompanied me was both fascinated and horrified by the appearing-disappearing hot spots on my face. The doctor and nurse were nonplussed; they probably thought it was a food allergy but I was too dumb to know.

They prescribed me prednisone for 5 days and gave me the first pill. Bad idea. But I took it. They gave me Benadryl. It calmed my skin down and knocked me out. But I had to stop massage because the friction on my skin created a really, really bad reaction. Every morning and evening I had to calm my skin down with cold water and melaleuca-oil cream. I swelled up with water so much it was like an instant 10kg weight gain. I slept with my head elevated — when I slept.

My symptoms were always worse at night. It terrified me. I finally stopped pretending I was normal and got rid of duvet and blankets I was so damn hot.

My parents paid for in-home meditative yoga sessions to try and calm my mind down so as not to aggravate my symptoms. I saw my old endocrinologist only days after the ER visit; he took my heart rate and immediately insisted I go on atenolol.

Within 20 minutes of taking it, I felt my stress drop. It took a year and a half for me to slowly de-swell to pre levels and to become cooler. Things that I figured out on my own: cut out salt, as salt increases water retention. Cut out pepper and hot spices like chili, cinnamon, and ginger because they increase heat. Eat an egg a day as it helps stabilize the body, as I understand it in my own mind.

Drink ice water; suck on ice. I tend to push myself, but the fatigue from the brain injury often managed to stop me cold. Pain hurts; fatigue incapacitates. It slowly started to dawn on me that my overactive sympathetic system was draining me too, so I used more AVE audiovisual entrainment sessions that would calm me instead of my preferred wake-up-be-alert sessions so I could write and create. I also used it less as I was concerned that it was forcing my brain to work and heal at a rate greater than it could take, like being at the tail end of back-to-back marathons.

Being like a vegetable during the news is not so bad, as I then become less fatigued afterwards and can answer e-mails or do other normal things for about an hour or so and then sleep better. The fatigue side effect is what really makes me hate this drug. Fatigue on top of fatigue is deadening. This is something no physician has ever spoken to me about, even when I bring it up. I find I need less in the summer than in the winter, sometimes not at all in the morning.

Go figure. The next big thing to make a difference was when I met the trainer last summer, who told me I was exercising too much. He cut my exercise by two-thirds, and he drastically reduced the aerobic portion of it.

He said we need to get you sleeping flat, something no doctor ever thought important. I love him for that. So we built back up over time to half of what I used to do, and I now mostly do weights and yoga. I sleep flat, fully covered albeit sans duvet. He told me that because of the changes caused by traumatic brain injury, many athletes cannot return to athletic endeavours, and that was true for me too, albeit at a non-athletic level.

The most amazing thing about his regimen was that my shortness of breath and tight chest almost disappeared. No longer did I eat breakfast, pant, pant; answer the phone, pant, pant; write a blog post, pant, pant.

Through all of this, I strived to understand what was going on. Well, that did it for me. I was tired of waiting for my brain to heal, if it ever was going to do so in this respect. The specialist, like almost every physician and surgeon, knows little about the hypothalamus a pituitary endocrinologist not knowing did shock me though since the hypothalamus controls the pituitary , only physiologists or some researchers in the US and Europe seem to have a clue.

The level of ignorance over what are considered well-known hormones and how medication affects blood test levels is astounding, never mind the more esoteric hormone testing. Everyone tests it differently. Give me a break. And I began my year-long-plus journey for an answer with a long talk with my father about the basics of this brain part and the action of stress. A side note: doctors older than about 60 know more about the basics than anyone younger as they studied more physiology and anatomy; today, those are pretty much crash courses.

Serves us well, eh? I thought about the sources of my stress: certain emotional situations that centre around disrespect, cognitive challenge, and physical challenge. Since my symptoms are worse at night, a time that typically is less stressful when the sympathetic system calms down and the parasympathetic increases but clearly was not so for me, I decided it was the latter. Also, the hypothalamus is driving my sympathetic system to always be on. I spoke about my hypothesis to a fellow brain injury survivor, who agreed with the direction of my thoughts.

And today, I just might be succeeding in fixing some aspects. See more Shireen Jeejeebhoy brain blogs. Used with permission. Please remember, we are not able to give medical or legal advice. If you have medical concerns, please consult your doctor. All posted comments are the views and opinions of the poster only. I recently had a TBI concussion and was hospitalized for hyponatremia.

They did water restrictions on me but that was about it. Since then symptoms were okay until week 6 of post concussion things became really bad. I saw a neuro endocrinologist who basically said I had no issue but what else explains this linear increase in body fat. Blood pressure is yo-yoing as well. I had really low blood pressure then high normal then really low. Seeing a new endocrInologist next week.

My neurologist seems confused too. Neither do my doctors sigh this blog was so helpful. I was born with a cystic mass between my 3rd and 4th ventricles. Luckily no one noticed. It caused hydrocephalus from birth.

It also causes my hypothalamus to go a bit wacky, as I like to call it. I had a shut put in at approximately That helped and I have had 2 ETV surgeries and over 20 shunt replacements in the last 38 years. The thing is, the hypothalamus is still acting up.

It can be 90 degrees and I will be freezing. I can gain weight in a heartbeat. It will go down but takes forever. If the cyst shifts all kinds of things go on. But like most people the thing that bothers me the most is the lack of information. Doctors just don't know what is going on most of the time. I have have 3 doctors who understood me in all these years. The hypothalamus works with the pituitary gland, which makes and sends other important hormones around the body. Together, the hypothalamus and pituitary gland control many of the glands that produce hormones of the body, called the endocrine system.

This includes the adrenal cortex, gonads, and thyroid. The hypothalamus also directly influences growth hormones. It commands the pituitary gland to either increase or decrease their presence in the body, which is essential for both growing children and fully developed adults. A hypothalamic disease is any disorder that prevents the hypothalamus from functioning correctly.

These diseases are very hard to pinpoint and diagnose because the hypothalamus has a wide range of roles in the endocrine system. The hypothalamus also serves the vital purpose of signaling that the pituitary gland should release hormones to the rest of the endocrine system.

As it is difficult for doctors to diagnose a specific, incorrectly functioning gland, these disorders are often called hypothalamic-pituitary disorders. In these cases, there are some hormone tests that doctors might prescribe to get to the root of the disorder. The most common causes of hypothalamic diseases are injuries to the head that impact the hypothalamus. Surgeries, radiation, and tumors can also cause disease in the hypothalamus.

Some hypothalamic diseases have a genetic link to hypothalamic disease. For instance, Kallman syndrome causes hypothalamic problems in children , most noticeably delayed or absent puberty , accompanied by an impaired sense of smell. Hypothalamus problems also appear to have a genetic link in Prader-Willi Syndrome. This is a condition in which a missing chromosome leads to short stature and hypothalamic dysfunction. Children might show signs of abnormal growth and abnormal puberty.

Adults might show symptoms linked to the various hormones their bodies cannot produce. There is usually a traceable link between the absent hormones and the symptoms they produce in the body. Tumor symptoms might include blurred vision, loss of vision, and headaches. As the hypothalamus plays such a vital role in the body, it is very important to keep it healthy. While a person cannot fully avoid genetic factors, they can take dietary steps towards ideal hypothalamus health on a daily basis to reduce the risk of hypothalamic disease.

The hypothalamus controls the appetite, and the foods in the diet influence the hypothalamus. Damage in the hypothalamus can result in the following symptoms NB! This page is approved and monitored by P. Frima-Verhoeven, Neurologist Recuper Everything on brain injury in plain language. Home » Consequences » Impact per brain area » Hypothalamus.