What Is Post Concussion Syndrome? (Explained Simply)
In this video, David Brimacombe shares his personal experience of living with post‑concussion syndrome (PCS) after seven concussions over two decades and outlines why PCS is widely misunderstood by both the public and clinicians. He explains the core physiological disruptions that follow a concussion—energy production deficits, blood‑flow and metabolic dysregulation, autonomic nervous system (ANS) imbalance, and reactive glucose intolerance—linking these to common PCS symptoms such as brain fog, light/sound sensitivity, sleep disturbance, emotional volatility, and vestibular instability. Brimacombe critiques the typical medical response of dismissing symptoms as anxiety or prescribing medication, emphasizing that normal scans do not mean the problem does not exist. He then provides a step‑by‑step, active‑recovery framework: stabilizing a morning routine (light exposure, breathwork, hydration, phone‑free time), establishing consistent sleep windows and pre‑sleep brain dumps, using brief pauses to temper emotional reactivity, avoiding high‑carbohydrate foods and triggering environments, and cultivating belief through small, repeatable habits (gratitude notes, mirror affirmations). Throughout, he stresses that PCS recovery is a long, layered process that requires intentional, incremental actions rather than passive hope. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to adopt these protocols, watch his detailed recovery journey, and remember that their brain is not broken.
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Most people feel that all concussions heal in a matter of weeks, at most in a month, until theirs doesn't. This video is for those who are still struggling. This video is for those people who have been told your brain is broken, because it's not. I want to talk about the signs and symptoms of post-concussion syndrome and provide you with hope that there is a path forward. And there is a way to heal yourself. Welcome to the PCS Resilience Collective. My name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions over 20 years, I've learned a lot about the lifestyle modifications needed in order to heal your PCS. Today I want to talk about signs and symptoms of PCS and what we can do to help solve them. First, I want to talk about how misunderstood it is to have PCS. There probably isn't another condition that is so misunderstood in both the public sphere as well as in medical literature. I went to multiple neurologists, specialists, physicians, most of which just told me that I have some underlying anxiety or depression or symptoms or issues that are making me feel the way that I was feeling. The concussion was irrelevant to the point of my symptoms. I knew deep down they were not. Correct. Okay, here's the problem though. Your functional scans from your neurologist come back clean. Okay, your neurologist says, we can help you with your symptoms, but I do not have a course for this problem. Your physician sees these scans and says, well, maybe we provide you with some antidepressants. Okay, maybe we provide you with some other medications that are going to help bring down your symptoms. You know deep inside this is not going to help you. That just because it's not showing up on these scans, just because these physicians aren't able to see what I'm actually dealing with, okay, that it doesn't exist. Okay, I'm here to see you. Okay, I was one of those invisible patients for a long time. I went from, like I mentioned, specialist to specialist. In most cases, I was given more stress than it did help me because they would constantly Reaffirm what the other said. We're not sure what's going on with your brain. We're not sure why you can't sleep, you can't eat anything, you're irritable. Maybe there's some underlying social-emotional issues. Maybe there's anxiety which runs in the family. Maybe there's some other things going on, but the concussion was never talked about. It was like it never existed. They've kind of glazed over the fact that I had had 7 documented concussions. in 20 years? No idea. Okay, so I want to talk about what is PCS, why there is hope for you, okay, and what we can do about it. Okay, let's begin. Let's start with a simple definition of what is post-concussion. Now, after concussion, you have an energy issue. Your body isn't able to produce enough energy. That's why you get that malaise, that fatigue. Your brain doesn't function properly. It feels like that wheel is spinning and nothing is happening. Okay? The other problem lies is not only are you producing less energy, you're actually consuming more. Okay? So there's a double-edged sword there. That's an issue. Secondly, you have blood flow dysregulation. You have metabolic issues, hormonal changes. All these things are a cascade. They almost turn your body onto a hard reset. Okay, you get up the next day and you're a completely different person. You feel completely different. Everything that is going on in your body feels foreign to you. It feels different than what it did prior. Okay, again, this is not unique to you as a person. This is how it goes with a concussion. So maybe those symptoms you're feeling— the brain fog, the irritability, the nausea, the light and sound sensitivity— maybe those are some of your symptoms. Maybe they're not. There's actually 7 kinds of concussions. So everyone's going to present their signs and they're going to feel the symptoms a little bit differently. But understand this, everyone's going to have some commonality in the sense that, okay, if we don't do a few things early, our symptoms might linger and therefore develop PCS later on. Let's start with this: PCS is not really the injury itself. PCS is your body actually trying to help you because it's, it's been dysregulated for so long. It feels a threat. There's always a threat going on in your body and outside your body that you're basically on guard at all times. So even something as simple as going to a store to pick up an item, your body sees the lights, it hears the sounds, all those things, okay, feel like a threat because it's constantly on guard. Okay, so Understand this, that those are completely normal after concussion, and they might linger if they're not dealt with early on, but they can be tackled. Let's talk about some of the other symptoms that may linger on, and let's start at the top— your ANS, your autonomic nervous system. Now, again, the simple analogy is the gas and the brake, okay? If your gas is pressed permanently, your sympathetic drive, your stress system is going to be overworked. Okay? And again, there's nothing wrong with toggling in and out of the sympathetic, which is your stress state, and your parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest state. But if you're constantly putting the— pressing the gas, okay, you're going to burn the engine out. You're going to have smoke coming out of your ears. Okay? Metaphorically, obviously. But you're going to feel that stress building up in your system. Because you're redlining the engine, you're causing great strain on it. Okay, but that's because your body has a threat. It feels threatened by any and everything going on. Every little sound, every, every little, um, thought that goes through your mind, okay, is a threat, is a danger, and your body's responding by it being hypervigilant against all those threats. Okay, so conversely, the brake is going to help. Okay, so applying that brake while taking your foot off the gas is your parasympathetic. It's going to provide that time to rest and digest, for that engine to start cooling down a little bit, to take that foot off the gas pedal. Okay, but your ANS is hugely impactful, and it's not just on your stress state. It affects so many other systems in your body that you're not aware of. Next thing hit me super hard— blood sugar swings hit me a lot harder. My body's ability to tolerate high levels of glucose, fructose, sucrose, any kind of sugar that I put into my body, okay, was gone. It didn't matter what I ate. If it had any carb in it that wasn't attached to a fiber, I struggled. It got to the point where I had to actually do a glucose tolerance test, okay, where they actually give you some syrup. It's got about 80 grams of sugar in it. You take it and you wait for 2 hours and you see where your Reactive hypo— if you're reactive hypoglycemic, how your blood sugars respond 2 hours after that consumption. Now, it got to the point where I went home after that, and this was 2 weeks after my 7th concussion, and I lied down on the couch and I felt like I was going to die. Like, legitimately, the room was spinning. I felt like I was nauseous. I bet you if they would have tested my blood sugars right there, it would have been through the roof. It would have been astronomical. I would have been pre-diabetic. Because my body just didn't know what to do with that sugar. Everything was a threat. All that sugar goes into the system and it goes on red alert, alarms are going off in your body. I couldn't handle it. To this day, I still struggle with high amounts of carbohydrates. So I toggle down and just eat lots of fruits and vegetables that have fiber that slows down that absorption. But keep in mind that that is normal with PCOS. Again, these— there's all things that we can do to help these systems and processes, but understand that you are not abnormal to think that I cannot eat that bread, that pasta, that cookie anymore because it throws me into this hypervigilant state where I feel like the room is spinning. I feel irritable. I feel like I'm not myself. The next sign is you cannot sleep. You're tossing and turning. You can't get to sleep. You can't stay asleep. You get up too early, get up too late. Your circadian rhythm, so when your body's ready to go to bed and ready to wake up, is completely out of whack. Now, again, a couple simple things that you could do to help with this, okay, is some regularity. From 30 minutes window of when you go to sleep and when you get up is important. Consistency is important. So remember, sleep is when your body repairs. Sleep is when your brain actually flushes out all those toxins. Okay? So if we're not getting proper sleep, we're not providing the body its time to repair. Now you're going to say, how can I sleep? Well, it starts with this. My biggest thing before going to sleep when I was struggling with PCS was to get rid of the rumination because I'd get up at 3:00 AM and think about that email that I should have sent, that work that I haven't completed, but it was just nonsense. Okay? So what you need to do is do a brain dump before you go to bed. Get rid of all those thoughts, clear the slate. There's nothing left in that mind. It's completely flushed out. Okay? Remind yourself that you are safe, you're healing. It is all part of the process and it's time for slumber. Go to bed. If you happen to get up, okay, again, that will happen. That happens to any and everyone. Okay? But when you just sit there and stew, it actually makes it worse. Get up, read a book, go to the bathroom, do something with a low stimulation, and then your body will naturally feel the desire to go back to bed. At that point, go to sleep and you should be okay. But again, dysregulation of sleep is normal, and so don't feel like this is something that only you are feeling. Okay, again, that consistency is going to help. Okay, and reminding yourself that you are safe before you go to bed will give your body that reassurance that it needs to go to sleep. Your emotional state is fragile. Okay. Now, again, full disclosure, for me, this was the hardest part. I am a teacher by trade and I have 3 children at home. So there wasn't a lot of downtime. I was constantly around noise and stimulation. And it was really, really difficult. Okay. And I was constantly on edge. I had outbursts I'm not proud of. Okay. But again, I learned from those things. I learned from those outbursts because I understand that I was not in control. I was acting irrationally. I would step back after the situation and say, what was that? Okay. But in the moment I couldn't control myself. And that is another sign, okay, that you're likely still having PCS is that you don't have that ability to control your emotions. You're basically having these out-of-body experiences where you're losing the quote unquote, losing your marbles all over the place. And that was me, okay? I was emotionally unstable at the smallest, smallest things, okay? And any kind of overstimulation is going to cause you to explode. So what are we going to do about this? Again, it starts with understanding, okay, your situation. So if you can, always pause. So the best thing you can do in any situation before you react is take a count of 3 seconds or 5 seconds in your head. By the time you count down from 5, I can guarantee your desire to get irritable, your desire to start crying or start yelling is going to be far less because we act out of emotion. We act irrationally. But if you take a second to calm down, even just stop, pause, and then react, you're going to have a muted emotional response and therefore You'll probably be more in control of your emotions. Understand that PCS recovery is a puzzle, okay? There's many working pieces. It is not easy to recover. I want to talk a bit about my story and how long it took me to recover. Now, I had PCS on 2 separate occasions, so you say I'm a seasoned vet at the PCS game. So the first time took me about a year to get back, and then I suffered 2 more concussions, and that second concussion I actually sustained a bout of a 2-year PCS, which was tough. And for me, the hardest part was I was stubborn. Okay, I still am stubborn, but I was super stubborn. I wanted to keep teaching. I wanted to kind of live my life and pretend like everything was fine, when in fact I was an emotional mess. I was in a mess inside. I remember there's times where kids would start laughing at me in the hallway because I'd be walking. I had severe issues with my vestibular system where I was out of balance and I would constantly see multiple objects. So I'd be walking down the hallway, there'd be stanchions between the doors where I'd be moving from hallway to hallway. And a lot of times I'd be walking and I really have to focus. I'm like, I can't tell which is the mirage or the kind of the, the actual stanchion and which one is just made up in my mind. So I'd have to walk, and a lot of times I'd walk right into them if I miscalculated. Kids would start looking at me like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, I'm okay, don't worry. And you'd always play it down. It's okay, I just kind of stepped on something. I'm fine, lost my balance. I'd be walking down the aisles in class in between— they're writing a test— and I just stumble and I'd fall into a desk and cause a huge scene. And, oh, sorry guys, I just tripped. They probably thought That I was just the biggest klutz in the world. And again, I just wanted to live my life because I thought, you know what, this wasn't going to go away. There was a time in my life where I thought I had complete disbelief. I was just like, I hope and I pray that one day through the graces of God that I'll be better. Hope is not a bad thing necessarily, but hope should not be your protocol. Hope should not be the path forward. Hope should be something that gives you the motivation. To go ahead and create the systems and the protocols that are going to help you heal. Okay, I wasn't there yet. So when I started to actually feel like I had a chance is when I started to implement small changes along the way. Now, in the moment, these small changes seemed just small. I mean, adding a sticky of gratitude in the morning and high-fiving myself in the mirror— what are you doing? But guess what? Those were the small steps that gave me the belief that provided me the motivation to take more steps and eventually layer up and layer up even more. And understand this about the PCS recovery game. It is not a short route for most of you. Okay? This is a long road, not a short path, but there are steps that you can take that are going to give you the belief to add more and therefore get more belief. Okay, if you don't take that first step, you'll never have the chance to recover. Okay, this is an active form of recovery. It is not passive. It is not, I broke my leg, I sit and relax. It is not, I just had surgery, I need to sit in the hospital bed and wait for my body to heal. This is an active recovery. You have to put in the work if you want to get the results. Now again, you don't have to put in the work. I didn't put in the work for the first year of my second stint of PCS. I just hoped and wished that I would recover. I was ignorant, stubborn, and really just kind of avoiding what I knew was there until I couldn't take it anymore. Okay, so understand this: take the right steps, take the right protocols in the right order, and you can and will recover from your situation. 3 things I want to leave you with. Okay, first thing you need to do is you need to win the morning. You need to stabilize your morning routine. So many times people start dysregulated and they continue that throughout their day. They look on their phone, they start to get angry, they start to think about all those things that people are saying about them or situation in the news. That is not helping you. First 30 minutes to an hour of your day, get off your phone. If you can see The morning light of the sun. Fantastic. Do a little bit of breathwork. Have some water and hydrate. Okay, but win the morning so you can win the day. Okay, the second thing you need to do is figure out those situations that are causing you the greatest grief, those environments, those people. Okay, and for now you need to avoid them. If they're not going to help you, if they're going to cause you harm, they can't be part of your recovery plan. Okay, and lastly, you need to believe. That subconscious loop that plays in your mind that tells you this is part of who you are, this is permanently part of who you are, needs to be gone. Okay, you need a new you, and the new you needs to believe in a roadmap that leads to your recovery. Okay, it starts with some small actionable steps that build over time. Okay, but those actions create beliefs. Belief in your recovery, which creates more motivation to create more action. Okay, but it starts with small actions that layer up. If you want to learn more about my recovery, okay, you can watch the video about my raw recovery journey and all the steps it took to get to where I am today. Okay, if you like this content, please like and subscribe. I really appreciate you, appreciate you taking the time to watch. Until next time, have a great day, and remember, your brain is not broken. You can do this.
