HYPOGLYCEMIA
Jake hadn't eaten since breakfast — he'd just been too busy. As he headed off to wrestling practice, he felt like he was running out of energy, so he grabbed some mini donuts from the vending machine. Two hours later, Jake felt dizzy and shaky, and he was starting to get a headache. Jake had felt this way before, and one of his friends said he might have hypoglycemia. But when Jake visited his doctor, she told him that it was unlikely.
Lots of people wonder if they have hypoglycemia (pronounced: hy-po-gly-see-mee-uh), but the condition is not at all common in teens. Teens who do have hypoglycemia usually have it as part of another health condition, such as diabetes.
What Is Hypoglycemia?
The body's most important fuel is glucose, a type of sugar. When you digest most foods, sugar is released, and that sugar ends up in your bloodstream as glucose. Your body, particularly your brain and nervous system, needs a certain level of glucose to function — not too much, and not too little. If your blood glucose level isn't right, your body will react by showing certain symptoms.
Hypoglycemia occurs when a person's blood sugar levels are abnormally low, and it's a potentially serious condition. If you know someone who has diabetes, you may have heard them talk about "insulin shock," which is the common name for a severe hypoglycemic reaction. People with diabetes may experience hypoglycemia if they don't eat enough or if they take too much insulin — the medicine most commonly used to treat diabetes in kids.
What Are the Symptoms of Hypoglycemia?
Some symptoms of hypoglycemia are caused when the body releases extra adrenaline (epinephrine), a hormone that raises blood sugar levels, into the bloodstream to protect against hypoglycemia. High blood levels of adrenaline can make the skin become pale and sweaty, and a person can also have symptoms such as shakiness, anxiety, and heart palpitations (a fast, pounding heartbeat).
Other symptoms of hypoglycemia are caused when not enough glucose gets to the brain; in fact, the brain is the organ that suffers most significantly and most rapidly when there's a drop in blood sugar. These symptoms include headache, extreme hunger, blurry or double vision, fatigue, and weakness. At its most severe, insufficient glucose flow to the brain can cause confusion, seizures, and loss of consciousness (coma).
Who Gets Hypoglycemia?
Almost all teens who take blood sugar-lowering medicine for diabetes get hypoglycemia from time to time. Insulin moves sugar out of the blood and into the body's cells, where it's used as a fuel. Someone with diabetes who takes too much insulin or doesn't eat enough food to balance the effects of insulin may have a drop in blood sugar.
Hypoglycemia related to not eating rarely occurs in teens and adults unless the starvation is severe, as in anorexia.
Poisoning or overdoses of some substances, such as alcohol, or certain drugs, like insulin or other diabetes medications, can cause some otherwise healthy people to develop hypoglycemia. People with certain types of cancer or severe chronic illness also can get hypoglycemia. There are also rare genetic forms of hypoglycemia, but the symptoms are severe and almost always begin in infancy.
If hypoglycemia is so rare among people in their teen and adult years, why do a lot of people think they have it?
There are a couple of reasons. For one thing, the symptoms that occur with hypoglycemia overlap with those that people can have for many other reasons — or no reason at all. It's normal to feel fatigue, weakness, or have a headache periodically, especially if someone has had a stressful day or too little sleep. And drinking a lot of coffee, cola, or other caffeine-containing beverages can certainly make a person feel a bit shaky or jittery.
Also, it seems that some people's bodies react differently to eating high amounts of sugar than others. When these people eat meals that contain lots of sugar and starch — like Jake did when he grabbed the donuts — the rise and fall of blood sugar that results can trigger hypoglycemia-like symptoms, even though the blood sugar doesn't actually drop to below-normal levels.
How Is Hypoglycemia Diagnosed?
A doctor who thinks a person might have hypoglycemia will ask the patient about medical history and diet, in particular about the timing of the symptoms, whether they tend to occur after eating high-sugar meals, and if the symptoms go away quickly with eating sugar.
The only way to tell for sure whether someone's symptoms are related to hypoglycemia is to test the blood sugar while the person is having the symptoms. If such a test shows that the blood sugar is truly low, the doctor may do other tests to diagnose specific diseases that can cause hypoglycemia.
How Is Hypoglycemia Treated?
The treatment of hypoglycemia depends upon its cause. If you're otherwise healthy and you notice occasional hypoglycemia-like symptoms, you might try eating a diet that's lower in simple sugars and/or cutting down on your caffeine intake. If this doesn't make the symptoms go away, be sure to talk with your doctor.
Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD Date reviewed: September 2006
DEHYDRATION
Dehydration is a condition that occurs when a person loses more fluids than he or she takes in. Dehydration isn't as serious a problem for teens as it can be for babies or young children. But if you ignore your thirst, dehydration can slow you down.
Our bodies are about two thirds water. When someone gets dehydrated, it means the amount of water in his or her body has dropped below the level needed for normal body function. Small decreases don't cause problems, and in most cases, they go completely unnoticed. But losing larger amounts of water can sometimes make a person feel quite sick.
Causes of Dehydration
One common cause of dehydration in teens is gastrointestinal illness. When you're flattened by a stomach bug, you lose fluid through vomiting and diarrhea.
You might also hear that you can get dehydrated from playing sports. In reality, it's rare to reach a level of even moderate dehydration during sports or other normal outdoor activity. But if you don't replace fluid you lose through sweat as you go, you can become dehydrated from lots of physical activity, especially on a hot day.
Some athletes, such as wrestlers who need to reach a certain weight to compete, dehydrate themselves on purpose to drop weight quickly before a big game or event by sweating in saunas or using laxatives or diuretics, which make a person go to the bathroom more. This practice usually hurts more than it helps, though. Athletes who do this feel weaker, which affects performance. They can also have more serious problems, like abnormalities in the salt and potassium levels in the body. Such changes can also lead to problems with the heart's rhythm.
Dieting can sap a person's water reserves as well. Beware of diets or supplements, including laxatives and diuretics that emphasize shedding "water weight" as a quick way to lose weight. Losing water weight is not the same thing as losing actual fat.
Signs of Dehydration
To counter dehydration, you need to restore the proper balance of water in your body. First, though, you have to recognize the problem.
Thirst is one indicator of dehydration, but it is not an early warning sign. By the time you feel thirsty, you might already be dehydrated. Other symptoms of dehydration include:
feeling dizzy and lightheaded
having a dry or sticky mouth
producing less urine and darker urine
As the condition progresses, a person will start to feel much sicker as more body systems (or organs) are affected by the dehydration.
Preventing Dehydration
The easiest way to avoid dehydration is to drink lots of fluids, especially on hot, dry, windy days. Water is usually the best choice. Drinking water does not add calories to your diet and can be great for your health.
The amount that people need to drink will depend on factors like how much water they're getting from foods and other liquids and how much they're sweating from physical exertion.
When you're going to be outside on a warm day, dress appropriately for your activity. Wear loose-fitting clothes and a hat if you can. That will keep you cooler and cut down on sweating. If you do find yourself feeling parched or dizzy, take a break for a few minutes. Sit in the shade or someplace cool and drink water.
If you're participating in sports or strenuous activities, drink some fluids before the activity begins. You should also drink at regular intervals (every 20 minutes or so) during the course of the activity and after the activity ends. The best time to train or play sports is in the early morning or late afternoon to avoid the hottest part of the day.
If you have a stomach bug and you're spending too much time getting acquainted with the toilet, you probably don't feel like eating or drinking anything. But you still need fluids. Take lots of tiny sips of fluids. For some people, ice pops may be easier to tolerate.
Caffeine is a diuretic, meaning it causes a person to urinate (pee) more. It's not clear whether this causes dehydration or not, but to be safe, it's probably a good idea to stay away from too much caffeine in hot weather, during long workouts, or in other situations where you might sweat a lot.
When to See a Doctor
Dehydration can usually be treated by drinking fluids. But if you faint or feel weak or dizzy every time you stand up (even after a couple of hours) or if you have very little urine output, you should tell an adult and visit your doctor. The doctor will probably look for a cause for the dehydration and encourage you to drink more fluids. If you're more dehydrated than you realized, especially if you can't hold fluids down because of vomiting, you may need to receive fluids through an IV to speed up the rehydration process. An IV is an intravenous tube that goes directly into a vein.
Occasionally, dehydration might be a sign of something more serious, such as diabetes, so your doctor may run tests to rule out any other potential problems.
In general, dehydration is preventable. So just keep drinking that H2O for healthy hydration.Reviewed by: Mary L. Gavin, MDDate reviewed: January 2006
MENINGITIS
Meningitis is a word you might hear on the news. That's because there are sometimes outbreaks of meningitis at schools or colleges — and it can be a serious illness. But many people get better after they have meningitis and there are ways to keep from getting sick from it.
What Is Meningitis?
The central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) is surrounded by cerebrospinal (say: suh-ree-bro-spy-nul) fluid. This fluid acts to cushion and protect the central nervous system when you move around. Even more protection is given by the meninges (say: muh-nin-jeez), which are the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord.
Meningitis (say: men-un-jye-tus) is a disease involving inflammation (swelling), or irritation, of the meninges. There are different kinds of meningitis, but most of the time it is caused by germs, especially viruses.
Meningitis gets attention because it not only makes a person feel sick, it can have lasting effects on a person's ability to think and learn. It also can cause hearing loss. But many people recover from the infection without permanent damage. And the illness is so rare, you may never know anyone who gets it.
How Does Someone Get Meningitis?
The body has natural defenses against infections — and usually even if someone comes across a virus or bacteria that can cause meningitis, the body can fight it off. Everyone has lots of germs living on and in their bodies. Most of the time, these germs don't cause any illness. In fact, some of them, like some of the bacteria normally found in the intestines, help the body to work properly. However, some germs do cause infections.
If a person gets an infection, the body's immune system will go to work to fight it. That's why you might feel sick one day, but then you start to feel better. The immune system is doing its job.
Some germs, however, are tricky. They can outsmart the body's defenses and spread inside of the body. Some of these germs can even invade the central nervous system, infecting the meninges and causing meningitis.
Bacteria and Viruses
Many viruses can cause viral meningitis. They include a family of viruses known as enteroviruses (say: en-teh-row-vye-rus-ez). Like most viruses, enteroviruses infect your body through saliva (spit), feces (poop), and nasal discharge (snot). This is why washing your hands after you go to the bathroom, after you sneeze, and before you eat is so important.
It's also possible to get viral meningitis as a complication of chickenpox, but this is also very rare in healthy kids. These days, many kids are vaccinated with two shots to prevent chickenpox before starting school.
Bacterial meningitis is contagious, which means it can be passed to someone else by spit or snot. It can be spread when you sneeze or cough, when you share cups or utensils, or when you kiss someone. Vaccines are given to kids to help protect them from serious diseases like meningitis.
What Are the Symptoms of Meningitis?
Usually, someone with meningitis is very sick. Symptoms may include:
a very bad headache that won't go away
neck stiffness
back stiffness
eye pain or irritation when exposed to light
nausea, or being sick to the stomach
vomiting, or throwing up
body aches
fever
feeling very sleepy or unable to fully wake up
feeling very confused or out of it
Symptoms of meningitis can come on very quickly or take a couple of days to appear. Anyone who is ill with symptoms of meningitis needs to seek medical care right away.
What Will the Doctor Do?
When someone is ill and may have symptoms of meningitis, a doctor will ask many questions to figure out how long the person has been sick and what may have caused the illness. The doctor will do a complete physical examination and if he or she suspects that meningitis might be causing a person's illness, a spinal tap is usually done.
A spinal tap allows the doctor to collect some of the cerebrospinal fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. During a spinal tap, a person usually lies on his or her side curled into a ball. First, the doctor will numb the skin with medication. (This is done to prevent pain.)
The person needs to lie very still while the doctor inserts a very thin needle into the spinal column. The needle is placed between two vertebral bones in the lower back away from the spinal cord. Fluid is removed and collected in some tubes. Then the needle is removed and the doctor puts a bandage over the area.
After it is collected, the spinal fluid will be examined under a microscope to see if any bacteria, cells, or substances that indicate inflammation or infection are there. Usually by looking at the spinal fluid in this way, a doctor will be able to tell if it seems like someone has meningitis. The fluid will also be sent to a laboratory to be tested for bacteria and sometimes for viruses. Once the doctors know what germ is causing the meningitis, they can choose the best medicine to treat the infection. Treatment depends on the type of meningitis.
Bacterial meningitis is very serious and a person will need to be in the hospital during treatment. Strong antibiotic medicine will be given through an IV (a thin tube that goes into a vein to give medicine) to get rid of the bacteria. Fluids containing glucose (sugar) and minerals may also be given through the IV to help a person recover.
Viral meningitis can also be serious, but usually is not as bad as meningitis caused by bacteria. A person with viral meningitis may still need to be in the hospital for a few days and it may take weeks before he or she is feeling better. Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so a person with viral meningitis will need lots of rest to fight off the infection.
Can Meningitis Be Prevented?
If someone gets bacterial meningitis in your neighborhood or school, doctors will want to know who was in close contact with this person. Close contact means living with or spending a lot of time with the person, or sharing the same utensils or cups. This is important because people who have been in close contact should take antibiotics for a few days, just in case they were infected with the bacteria, too. The medicine can help prevent them from developing meningitis. But that won't prevent sickness if a virus caused the meningitis.
If you've had all your vaccinations, they will help protect you from getting meningitis. But there's another way to prevent those germs from getting inside your body: Wash your hands. Wash up regularly with warm, soapy water — especially before eating, after using the bathroom, and whenever your hands are dirty. It's also smart to cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze. Then — you guessed it — wash your hands!
Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD Date reviewed: September 2007 Originally reviewed by: Joel Klein, MD
BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM
You're in the middle of a meeting at work, but your mind keeps drifting to the parent-teacher conference you have tonight ... and the car you have to pick up at the shop on the way home ... and how you wish you hadn't skipped lunch because the rumbling in your stomach is driving you nuts. Then, suddenly, you're back in the moment, hoping nobody noticed your brief "departure."
It may seem as if your brain is always on the go. And it is. The brain not only controls what you think and feel, how you learn and remember, and the way you move and talk, but also many things you're less aware of — such as the beating of your heart, the digestion of your food, and yes, even the amount of stress you feel. Like you, your brain is quite the juggler.
Anatomy of the Nervous System
If you think of the brain as a central computer that controls all bodily functions, then the nervous system is like a network that relays messages back and forth from the brain to different parts of the body. It does this via the spinal cord, which runs from the brain down through the back and contains threadlike nerves that branch out to every organ and body part.
When a message comes into the brain from anywhere in the body, the brain tells the body how to react. For example, if you accidentally touch a hot stove, the nerves in your skin shoot a message of pain to your brain. The brain then sends a message back telling the muscles in your hand to pull away. Luckily, this neurological relay race takes a lot less time than it just took to read about it.
Considering everything it does, the human brain is incredibly compact, weighing just 3 pounds. Its many folds and grooves, though, provide it with the additional surface area necessary for storing all of the body's important information.
The spinal cord, on the other hand, is a long bundle of nerve tissue about 18 inches long and ¾ inch thick. It extends from the lower part of the brain down through spine. Along the way, various nerves branch out to the entire body. These are called the peripheral nervous system.
Both the brain and the spinal cord are protected by bone: the brain by the bones of the skull, and the spinal cord by a set of ring-shaped bones called vertebrae. They're both cushioned by layers of membranes called meninges as well as a special fluid called cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid helps protect the nerve tissue, keep it healthy, and remove waste products.
The brain is made up of three main sections: the forebrain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain.
1. The Forebrain
The forebrain is the largest and most complex part of the brain. It consists of the cerebrum — the area with all the folds and grooves typically seen in pictures of the brain — as well as some other structures beneath it.
The cerebrum contains the information that essentially makes us who we are: our intelligence, memory, personality, emotion, speech, and ability to feel and move. Specific areas of the cerebrum are in charge of processing these different types of information. These are called lobes, and there are four of them: the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital.
The cerebrum has right and left halves, called hemispheres, which are connected in the middle by a band of nerve fibers (the corpus collosum) that enables the two sides to communicate. Though these halves may look like mirror images of each other, many scientists believe they have different functions. The left side is considered the logical, analytical, objective side. The right side is thought to be more intuitive, creative, and subjective. So when you're balancing the checkbook, you're using the left side; when you're listening to music, you're using the right side. It's believed that some people are more "right-brained" or "left-brained" while others are more "whole-brained," meaning they use both halves of their brain to the same degree.
The outer layer of the cerebrum is called the cortex (also known as "gray matter"). Information collected by the five senses comes into the brain from the spinal cord to the cortex. This information is then directed to other parts of the nervous system for further processing. For example, when you touch the hot stove, not only does a message go out to move your hand but one also goes to another part of the brain to help you remember not to do that again.
In the inner part of the forebrain sits the thalamus, hypothalamus, and pituitary gland. The thalamus carries messages from the sensory organs like the eyes, ears, nose, and fingers to the cortex. The hypothalamus controls the pulse, thirst, appetite, sleep patterns, and other processes in our bodies that happen automatically. It also controls the pituitary gland, which makes the hormones that control our growth, metabolism, digestion, sexual maturity, and response to stress.
2. The Midbrain
The midbrain, located underneath the middle of the forebrain, acts as a master coordinator for all the messages going in and out of the brain to the spinal cord.
3. The Hindbrain
The hindbrain sits underneath the back end of the cerebrum, and it consists of the cerebellum, pons, and medulla. The cerebellum — also called the "little brain" because it looks like a small version of the cerebrum — is responsible for balance, movement, and coordination.
The pons and the medulla, along with the midbrain, are often called the brainstem. The brainstem takes in, sends out, and coordinates all of the brain's messages. It is also controls many of the body's automatic functions, like breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, swallowing, digestion, and blinking.
How the Nervous System Works
The basic functioning of the nervous system depends a lot on tiny cells called neurons. The brain has billions of them, and they have many specialized jobs. For example, sensory neurons take information from the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin to the brain. Motor neurons carry messages away from the brain and back to the rest of the body.
All neurons, however, relay information to each other through a complex electrochemical process, making connections that affect the way we think, learn, move, and behave.
Intelligence, learning, and memory. At birth, the nervous system contains all the neurons you will ever have, but many of them are not connected to each other. As you grow and learn, messages travel from one neuron to another over and over, creating connections, or pathways, in the brain. It's why driving seemed to take so much concentration when you first learned but now is second nature: The pathway became established.
In young children, the brain is highly adaptable; in fact, when one part of a young child's brain is injured, another part can often learn to take over some of the lost function. But as we age, the brain has to work harder to make new neural pathways, making it more difficult to master new tasks or change established behavior patterns. That's why many scientists believe it's important to keep challenging your brain to learn new things and make new connections— it helps keeps the brain active over the course of a lifetime.
Memory is another complex function of the brain. The things we've done, learned, and seen are first processed in the cortex, and then, if we sense that this information is important enough to remember permanently, it's passed inward to other regions of the brain (such as the hippocampus and amygdala) for long-term storage and retrieval. As these messages travel through the brain, they too create pathways that serve as the basis of our memory.
Movement. Different parts of the cerebrum are responsible for moving different body parts. The left side of the brain controls the movements of the right side of the body, and the right side of the brain controls the movements of the left side of the body. When you press the accelerator with your right foot, for example, it's the left side of your brain that sends the message allowing you to do it.
Basic body functions. A part of the peripheral nervous system called the autonomic nervous system is responsible for controlling many of the body processes we almost never need to think about, like breathing, digestion, sweating, and shivering. The autonomic nervous system has two parts: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems.
The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for sudden stress, like if you see a robbery taking place. When something frightening happens, the sympathetic nervous system makes the heart beat faster so that it sends blood more quickly to the different body parts that might need it. It also causes the adrenal glands at the top of the kidneys to release adrenaline, a hormone that helps give extra power to the muscles for a quick getaway. This process is known as the body's "fight or flight" response.
The parasympathetic nervous system does the exact opposite: It prepares the body for rest. It also helps the digestive tract move along so our bodies can efficiently take in nutrients from the food we eat.
The senses. Your spouse may be a sight for sore eyes at the end of a long day — but without the brain, you wouldn't even recognize him or her. Pepperoni pizza sure is delicious — but without the brain, your taste buds wouldn't be able to tell if you were eating pizza or the box it came in. None of your senses would be useful without the processing that occurs in the brain.
Sight. Sight probably tells us more about the world than any other sense. Light entering the eye forms an upside-down image on the retina. The retina transforms the light into nerve signals for the brain. The brain then turns the image right-side up and tells us what we are seeing.
Hearing. Every sound we hear is the result of sound waves entering our ears and causing our eardrums to vibrate. These vibrations are then transferred along the tiny bones of the middle ear and converted into nerve signals. The cortex then processes these signals, telling us what we are hearing.
Taste. The tongue contains small groups of sensory cells called taste buds that react to chemicals in foods. Taste buds react to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Messages are sent from the taste buds to the areas in the cortex responsible for processing taste.
Smell. Olfactory cells in the mucous membranes lining each nostril react to chemicals we breathe in and send messages along specific nerves to the brain— which, according to experts, can distinguish between more than 10,000 different smells. With that kind of sensitivity, it's no wonder research suggests that smells are very closely linked to our memories.
Touch. The skin contains more than 4 million sensory receptors — mostly concentrated in the fingers, tongue, and lips — that gather information related to touch, pressure, temperature, and pain and send it to the brain for processing and reaction.
Things That Can Go Wrong With the Brain
Because the brain controls just about everything, when something goes wrong with it, it's often serious and can affect many different parts of the body. Inherited diseases, brain disorders associated with mental illness, and head injuries can all affect the way the brain works and upset the daily activities of the rest of the body.
Problems that can affect the brain include:
Brain tumors. A tumor is a swelling caused by overgrown tissue. A tumor in the brain may grow slowly and produce few symptoms until it becomes large, or it can grow and spread rapidly, causing severe and quickly worsening symptoms. Brain tumors in children can be benign or malignant. Benign tumors usually grow in one place and may be curable through surgery if they're located in a place where they can be removed without damaging the normal tissue near the tumor. A malignant tumor is cancerous and more likely to grow rapidly and spread.
Cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is the result of a developmental defect or damage to the brain before or during birth. It affects the motor areas of the brain. A person with cerebral palsy may have average intelligence or can have severe developmental delays or mental retardation. Cerebral palsy can affect body movement in many different ways. In mild cases of cerebral palsy, there may be minor muscle weakness of the arms and legs. In other cases, there may be more severe motor impairment — a child may have trouble talking and performing basic movements like walking.
Epilepsy. This condition is made up of a wide variety of seizure disorders. Partial seizures involve specific areas of the brain, and symptoms vary depending on the location of the seizure activity. Other seizures, called generalized seizures, involve a larger portion of the brain and usually cause uncontrolled movements of the entire body and loss of consciousness when they occur. Although the specific cause is unknown in many cases, epilepsy can be related to brain injury, tumors, or infections. The tendency to develop epilepsy may be inherited in families.
Headaches. Of the many different types of headaches, the most frequently occurring include tension headache (the most common type), caused by muscle tension in the head, neck, and shoulders; migraine, an intense, recurring headache with an unclear cause; and cluster headache, considered by some to be a form of migraine. Migraines occur with or without warning and may last for several hours or days. There seems to be an inherited predisposition to migraines as well as certain triggers that can lead to them. People with migraines may experience dizziness, numbness, sensitivity to light, and nausea, and may see flashing zigzag lines before their eyes.
Meningitis and encephalitis. These are infections of the brain and spinal cord that are usually caused by bacteria or viruses. Meningitis is an inflammation of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord, and encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain tissue. Both conditions may result in permanent injury to the brain.
Mental illness. Mental illnesses are psychological and behavioral in nature and involve a wide range of problems in thought and function. Certain mental illnesses are now known to be linked to structural abnormalities or chemical dysfunction of the brain. Some mental illnesses are inherited, but often the cause is unknown. Injuries to the brain and chronic drug or alcohol abuse also can trigger some mental illnesses. Signs of chronic mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia may first show up in childhood. Mental illnesses that can be seen in younger people include depression, eating disorders such as bulimia or anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and phobias.
Head injuries. Head injuries fit into two categories: external (usually scalp) injuries and internal head injuries. Internal injuries may involve the skull, the blood vessels within the skull, or the brain. Fortunately, most childhood falls or blows to the head result in injury to the scalp only, which is usually more frightening than threatening. An internal head injury could have more serious implications because the skull serves as the protective helmet for the delicate brain.
Concussions are also a type of internal head injury. A concussion is the temporary loss of normal brain function as a result of an injury. Repeated concussions can result in permanent injury to the brain. One of the most common reasons kids get concussions is through sports, so it's important to make sure they wear appropriate protective gear and don't continue to play if they've had a head injury.
Reviewed by: Steven Dowshen, MD Date reviewed: April 2007