At long last, I’m getting my information out about hormones and female concussion. I’ve been researching this quite a bit over the last several months and have much to share. To start, I’m providing background information in this post.
Update: March 19, 2014 I started publishing my posts about this topic. There are many, and I expect to add more continually. To get started, go to this post: Female Concussions and Hormones: Table of Contents.
My Research into Hormones and Concussion
Back in May of 2012, I started work on female concussions. June of that year was the 40-year anniversary of Title IX and I knew that work was needed for this topic. Some of my initial work focused on hormones, particularly with regard to migraine headaches. I’ve followed along with that and have updated information periodically.
I wasn’t able to devote all my time to this topic, but I watched for articles about hormones. As time went by that year and in 2013 I periodically updated my initial hormones post with new information. During that time, news came out about studies showing that progesterone is helpful with recovery from brain injury. I had that in the back of my mind all the time. I was always on the lookout for something. Or, should I say: when I came across something regarding hormones, I picked up on it. It was definitely on my radar.
One of the things I kept hearing about as one reason females would have a longer recovery period was hormones. That’s all I would hear: it’s because of hormones. But I could never get a comprehensive answer from anyone with regard to specifics. I tried and tried. I searched for information. I asked in Twitter chats in which medical experts participated. I asked medical experts in webinars. I asked all the time and was always looking for this information:
What exactly do you mean by hormones? What hormones? How do they work? How do they impact concussion? Noone could ever tell me. People kept repeating this as a fact but I could never find details. If you review news articles or other materials online, you’ll see mention of hormones as being a factor in female concussion recovery. That’s usually all you’ll see, though. No specifics.
Some of the only approaches or interpretations regarding females and concussions are that females report it more, are emotional, and tend to have more anxiety. Honestly, these approaches coupled with a lack of specific information about hormones led me to the worst interpretation: that the medical community was just attributing female response to concussion as being related to a certain “time of the month” at which hormones changed moods and other common perceptions of how women are at the time of their periods. I had not been able to find information to assume otherwise. I so wanted to be wrong, and continued to watch for it.
Then in November 2013 University of Rochester researchers published a study about the menstrual cycle and its effect on concussion recovery. Naturally, this grabbed my attention. I was thrilled to see this study. After watching for any information on hormones for over a year, and anything to do with progesterone and concussion recovery, I knew that this was big news.
At this point, I quickly moved my placeholder HerConcussion.com content into WordPress and got my full site up and running. Then I dove in to this topic in-depth. I spent much time on research for it in December, and now in January.
It’s fascinating. In the process, I’ve learned much. I’ve also uncovered information that I think has been overlooked and will change the way you look at female concussion. It has changed my view.
My Background
My main background and experience is as a Technical Writer, aka Technical Communicator. I have a degree in English/Technical Communication and have worked as a tech writer for 30 years. Most of that has been spent documenting software. I wrote many help files and help doc sets.
When you write procedures, you have to test them. You work through the steps on the screen and make sure everything is correct in your docs. The correct order. The correct field names. The information to be entered. It has to be accurate. With help files, with procedures, it’s simple. Either it works or it doesn’t. On or off. Yes or no.
I’ve taken this approach in my research. However, I can’t test this content as I would for writing procedure topics. Instead, I’ve searched for multiple references for specific items. I focused on sources such as studies, position statements, organization websites, and what I consider to be stronger journalism articles. I’m looking for facts. Tech writers have to focus on accuracy.
The Content
There will be multiple posts regarding hormones and related topics. They’ll include sources and references as well. Here’s a preliminary breakdown of the organization, which is subject to change. I’m well underway; posts will be published shortly.
Contents
This post will list all the posts related to this topic. I’ll update it as I publish posts.
Reference Materials
These are posts to which you’ll need to refer periodically. They include the background and supplementary information applicable to much of the content.
In-Depth Topics
This is where to find details about specific topics.
I anticipate much expansion of my hormones and female concussion sections. The more research I do, the more roads I find to travel. It is fascinating and quite complex. Finally, though. Finally. I’m getting my answer to my long-asked question: what do you mean exactly when you say that female concussion recovery is affected by hormones?
Keep reading all my posts! As I publish this, I’m still in the process of writing my first posts, so they’re not quite ready yet. However, I’ll be publishing them through this week (starting today, January 13th). Stay tuned! I’m very excited and eager to share what I’ve found. I think the information is very important. It’s been taking longer than I expected because I keep doing more research (and had to work on my business website a bit to complete an upgrade to responsive design). It’s time to cut things off and publish some posts. Then I’ll continue with research. In the meantime, here’s a link to my first hormones post on my main concussion site: fightingpcs.com: Concussions, Females, Hormones, and Migraines: A Connection? There are a number of links in that to articles which you can review to get some background information. Also, take a look at the University of Rochester study: Menstrual Cycle Influences Concussion Outcomes.
Thanks!
