What Causes Traumatic Brain Injury?
A traumatic brain injury is caused by brain damage after a hard blow to the head causes your brain to move inside your skull or when an object penetrates your skull. Falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries (Yan et al., 2025).
Non-penetrating traumatic brain injury can also be caused by a hit to the head, a car accident, or a sports injury. A penetrating traumatic brain injury can be caused by a sharp object like shrapnel or a knife, or a bullet.
A traumatic brain injury doesn't only cause the initial damage to the brain, but also secondary damage that is caused by a wave of chemical events that continue to damage your brain (Rauchman et al., 2023). Here's what it looks like:
Excitotoxicity, which increases the neurotransmitter glutamate in the brain, flooding your cells with calcium.
Mitochondrial damage, which occurs when your brain cells get overloaded with calcium and cannot repair themselves.
Oxidative stress, which damages your cell structures because your brain doesn't have enough antioxidants to fight them off.
Inflammation, which increases due to your immune system overreacting.
Cell death, which is the result of all of the above, leading to long-term TBI symptoms.
Who Is at Risk?
Anyone can suffer a traumatic brain injury regardless of age, but people over 65 have the highest risk of being hospitalized or dying from one due to a higher risk of falls. Men have higher rates of TBIs than women and are also more likely to be hospitalized or die from a TBI (Yan et al., 2025).
The risk is also higher in newborn babies to children aged 4, and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24.
What Are the Symptoms?
The symptoms of traumatic brain injuries vary depending on the severity of the damage. These can be physical symptoms or changes to the way you think or feel. Some symptoms can start immediately after the injury, and your symptoms can worsen or change over time.
You can have any number of the following TBI symptoms:
Headache
Nausea or vomiting
Dizziness or light-headedness
Sensitivity to light
Feeling tired or groggy
Sleeping more than usual or trouble sleeping
Mood changes, including depression, anxiety, and irritability
Confusion and trouble thinking clearly
Balance and coordination problems
Change in senses, like touch, vision, or smell
Hearing problems and/or ringing in the ears
Loss of consciousness for more than 30 minutes
Trouble communicating
Changes in behavior, like impulsiveness or angry outbursts
How Is Traumatic Brain Injury Diagnosed?
A doctor will usually diagnose a traumatic brain injury using a combination of your symptoms, a physical examination, and possibly imaging and blood tests.
During your initial exam, the doctor will ask how the injury occurred and what your symptoms are, and perform a physical examination. They will also perform a neurological examination to check your coordination and balance, motor and sensory skills, your speech and hearing, and your mental state.
Imaging tests that are used to diagnose are MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT scan (computed tomography scan).
How Is Traumatic Brain Injury Treated with Regenerative Therapies?
Traumatic brain injury treatment depends on the nature and severity of your injury. The first step involves stabilizing your condition to control pressure in your brain and try to reduce the amount of damage to your brain.
Beyond that, treatment focuses on symptom management with medication and cognitive rehabilitation therapy to try to help you regain brain function and cope with the effects of your injury. While these are helpful, there's more than can be done to encourage healing and prevent further damage by combining regenerative and integrative therapies.
Lifestyle modifications
There are several modifiable drivers that, when addressed, can help with healing after a traumatic brain injury.
For starters, improving your sleep. Sleep disruptions can prevent your glymphatic system from clearing out the metabolic waste that accumulates in the brain after an injury. This buildup can cause symptoms to linger. Your glymphatic system does most of this waste-clearing during sleep (Piantino et al., 2021).
Stress reduction is also key to TBI treatment as stress and TBI go hand in hand. Not only is the injury a significant stressor, but it can also make it harder for you to handle stress. Stress has also been shown to worsen the biological damage and symptoms following TBI. (Brand et al., 2023).
Diet and nutrition can also be modified to reduce inflammation, support brain repair, and control metabolic factors that can also contribute to inflammation.
Neurofeedback
Neurofeedback is a therapy that uses real-time brainwave monitoring to improve brain function.
A randomized controlled trial involving 87 TBI patients with cognitive impairment compared low-resolution tomography Z-score neurofeedback (LZNFB) with the usual TBI treatment. The TBI treated with LZNFB achieved significant improvements in immediate recall, delayed recall, recognition memory, selective attention, and productive activity compared to those treated with usual care (Chen et al., 2023).
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy
Your body needs sufficient oxygen to heal and when you're injured, it needs even more oxygen. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) delivers 100% pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber. This may be a helpful addition to your TBI treatment.
A 2016 meta-analysis of 8 studies found that HBOT significantly improved recovery and lowered overall mortality in TBI patients (Wang et al., 2016).
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) uses a magnetic coil placed on the scalp to deliver magnetic pulses to specific areas of the brain. It's mainly used to treat certain mental health disorders but has also shown promise as a treatment for traumatic brain injuries.
A 2025 meta-analysis showed that rTMS significantly improved cognitive function and reduced pain in TBI patients, though more large clinical trials are needed to validate these findings (Aleid et al., 2025).
Mesenchymal stem cell therapy
Stem cell therapy takes stem cells from your body and transplants them into the brain to repair damaged neural tissue and reduce inflammation. Research has found that mesenchymal stem cells convert into nerve cells and migrate to the injured areas of the brain where they reduce inflammation, improving motor function.
Though more research is needed, what's available so far suggests that mesenchymal stem cell therapy may be a safe TBI treatment (Adugna et al., 2022).
What Are Possible Complications?
Traumatic brain injuries can lead to different complications depending on the severity of the injury, especially when they're not treated or given enough time to heal. Second-impact syndrome, for example, is a life-threatening condition involving severe brain swelling after a second injury.
Other possible traumatic brain injury complications are seizures, brain bleeding, and permanent brain damage.
Traumatic brain injuries can also lead to functional complications. Sleep disturbances are common symptoms of brain injuries that can slow recovery by preventing your glymphatic system's ability to clear metabolic waste (Piantino et al., 2021). Nervous system dysfunction (secondary dysautonomia), which causes your body's automatic functions, such as heart rate and blood pressure, is another common complication (Wongsripuemtet et al., 2025). A TBI can also disrupt the connection between your gut and brain (gut-brain axis) leading to bacterial imbalance in your gut microbiome that triggers systemic inflammation that also impacts your brain (Lin et al., 2025).
Can Traumatic Brain Injury Be Prevented?
Technically, traumatic brain injuries are preventable by taking measures to avoid the injuries that cause them, like wearing a seatbelt and not driving impaired, wearing protective gear during sports, and taking measures to minimize the risk of falls. The thing is, though, that accidents can still occur when you're doing everything right.
If you suffer a TBI, you may be able to prevent or limit secondary damage with early, personalized treatment.
Takeaway
Traumatic brain injuries are complex and have a mild to significant impact on your physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Personalized treatment that combines conventional and regenerative therapies can support you in your recovery and help you achieve the best outcome.
