The brain starts developing in the womb very rapidly and keeps developing at a fast pace till adolescence after which the rate reduces
Interestingly, the brain never really stops developing. The difficulty however is that whereas your body develops new cells often, your brain typically does not develop new cells, the reason we should avoid brain injury, if we could.
A blunt force trauma to the head, a serious motor accident or even the violent shaking of a child’s head can cause significant traumatic brain injury.
The other commonest kinds of injury to the brain is a disruption of the blood supply to the brain, called a stroke…which can be caused by a blood clot in the brain or bleeding in the brain.
Both of these types of injuries can lead to seizures, abnormal behaviour, dizziness, inability to maintain balance, paralysis, inability to speak, move the hand, control the tongue etc.
The reason many people who suffer brain injury in Ghana die is because of late intervention. When there is brain injury time lost is brain lost. If intervention happens quickly brain function may be restored, otherwise the injury is forever and the only other way is to help by rehabilitation.
Children need about 43% of the energy they get from food every day to be fed to their brain to develop! The brain of infants can grow at about 1% per day! Hence you can’t take your child’s feeding for granted! If your children aren’t eating well then their brain is automatically getting less and less of what it needs and the outcome is poor brain function.
Important parts of the brain responsible for emotions and memory develop only by age 3 thereabout, the reason we don’t remember our baby days…. Hence poor feeding around these times will mean poor development of these important brain functions needed for academic work and functional relationships. Problems in the development in the brain around these times can also lead to some neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism.
Thanks for reading
Yours truly,
James Mawuli Gawu.
