When you are recovering from a concussion, it is easy for recovery to become synonymous with treatment. You go to physical therapy, see your concussion specialist, perhaps do vestibular rehabilitation, vision therapy, acupuncture, counseling, or another form of neurological rehabilitation. All of those interventions can be valuable.
But what happens when the appointment ends? There are another 23 hours in the day when your brain still has to navigate meals, errands, screens, family life, work, sleep, and the question of how much you can safely accomplish without completely exhausting yourself.
In my conversation with Alex Lombardi, founder of The Brain Edit, we explored an often-overlooked part of concussion recovery: how can you make everyday life easier for an injured brain? After sustaining three traumatic brain injuries herself, Alex began thinking of this process as a lifestyle edit. You do not necessarily need to reinvent your entire life. Sometimes you need to identify the places where your daily routine is unnecessarily taxing your brain—and make them a little easier.
1. Stop Making Your Brain Solve the Same Problems Every Day
After concussion, seemingly simple decisions can become surprisingly exhausting: what to wear, what to eat, where the keys went, what to bring, or what needs to happen for dinner. Individually, these decisions may seem insignificant. Collectively, they can create considerable cognitive load.
One simple strategy is to create systems so your brain does not have to keep solving the same problem. I used to lose my keys or wallet constantly. Eventually, I created one designated place where they went the moment I walked into the house. That is a lifestyle edit.
- Keys always go in the same bowl.
- Medications or supplements are organized in advance.
- Your work bag is packed the night before.
- Frequently used items have permanent locations.
- Breakfast and morning routines follow simple defaults.
2. Create a Permanent Grocery List
Grocery stores can be uniquely difficult after concussion: bright lights, music, people moving in every direction, visual scanning, label reading, decision-making, and remembering what you need. Add dietary restrictions or food sensitivities, and a simple grocery trip can become overwhelming.
A permanent grocery list is a reliable foundation of staple foods you want available in your home virtually all the time. Even when you are tired, hungry, or cognitively depleted, you know there will be something available that works for you.
- Protein: eggs, chicken, fish, turkey, tofu, Greek yogurt, or what works for your diet.
- Vegetables: several options you genuinely enjoy and can prepare easily.
- Healthy fats: olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, and nut butters.
- Easy snacks and emergency meals: options that require little or no preparation.
3. Make Healthy Food the Easy Food
Knowing what you “should” eat does not help much when you are exhausted at 6 p.m. and preparing dinner feels impossible. Prepared vegetables, prewashed greens, frozen vegetables, rotisserie chicken, pre-portioned foods, healthy frozen meals, and meal-delivery services can reduce the work and the decisions required.
These options may not work for every budget. But when feasible, you are not merely purchasing food—you are purchasing fewer decisions and less work. Sometimes the most helpful lifestyle intervention is removing a problem you repeatedly have to solve.
4. Experiment With the Order You Eat Your Food
Alex shared a practical nutrition strategy: try eating vegetables and protein first, then carbohydrate-rich foods later in the meal. Research outside the concussion field suggests meal sequence can influence the post-meal glucose response. We do not yet have evidence that this specific approach improves concussion recovery, but it can be a simple personal experiment if you notice fatigue, fogginess, hunger, or energy fluctuations after meals.
- Eat vegetables or other fiber-rich foods first.
- Have protein and healthy fats next.
- Eat more concentrated carbohydrates afterward.
5. Make Hydration Automatic
Even remembering to drink can become difficult when you are dealing with cognitive fatigue. Instead of waiting until you feel thirsty, make hydration part of an existing routine: wake up and drink water, take medication and drink water, eat lunch and refill your bottle, or leave the house with water in hand.
Some people with concussion also have autonomic dysfunction or POTS and may be specifically advised by their healthcare provider to increase fluids and sodium. Follow the individualized recommendations you have been given rather than assuming everyone needs the same amount of salt or electrolytes.
6. Learn the Difference Between Rest and Stimulation
You can lie down because you are exhausted, then pick up your phone, scroll, watch videos, answer texts, and check email. You may be physically inactive, but your brain is continuously processing visual information, language, movement, decisions, and emotional stimuli.
Experiment with a true low-stimulation break: put the phone away, reduce light if you are light-sensitive, close your eyes, get physically comfortable, breathe normally and slowly, and remove the expectation that you need to accomplish anything. Ask yourself afterward whether you actually feel more capable of engaging with your day.
7. Stop Waiting Until You Are Completely Depleted
One of the most difficult habits for high-achieving people after concussion is pushing until the brain forces them to stop. There is always one more email, errand, or task—until suddenly you are done not just for the next 20 minutes, but perhaps for the rest of the afternoon.
Begin noticing your early warning signs: pressure behind the eyes, increasing headache, difficulty finding words, irritability, blurred vision, rereading the same sentence, losing your train of thought, increasing dizziness, or the unmistakable feeling that your brain is slowing down. Treat those symptoms as information rather than something you automatically have to defeat.
8. Use the Two-Minute Reset
When the house is a mess and the amount to do feels overwhelming, set a timer for two minutes. Pick one small area and put away whatever you can. When the timer goes off, you are allowed to stop.
The goal is not to clean the house. It is to reduce one source of visual and mental clutter without turning it into an exhausting project. This approach can be adapted to email, medications, laundry, breakfast preparation, or any other recurring task.
9. Get Outside in the Morning
Natural outdoor light relatively early in the day is an important environmental signal for the circadian system, which helps regulate alertness and sleep. Make it simple: sit on the porch, drink your coffee outside, take the dog for a brief walk, or stand outdoors for a few minutes. If symptoms permit, pair morning light with gentle movement.
10. Ask Whether Your Treatment Schedule Is Becoming a Stressor
Treatment is important, but more treatment is not automatically better treatment. The commute can be exhausting, therapy can temporarily provoke symptoms, and constant scheduling can leave little time for sleep, relationships, enjoyable activities, or simply being a person rather than a patient.
Periodically examine the total load of recovery with your healthcare team. Ask what is helping, what has improved, whether the current frequency is still necessary, and whether your providers could coordinate care more effectively. This does not mean abruptly stopping necessary care; it means looking honestly at the whole load.
11. Do Not Turn Recovery Into Another Competition
People who were extremely driven before injury can become extremely driven about getting better: researching harder, scheduling more appointments, buying more supplements, doing more exercises, and tracking more biomarkers. Eventually, recovery itself can become stressful. Sometimes the next step is not adding another intervention. Sometimes it is removing something.
12. Give Yourself Permission to Have Different Kinds of Days
Recovery is rarely linear. Some days may be appropriate for work, movement, connection, and challenge. Other days may need to be quieter. Instead of judging each day by how much you accomplished, try asking: What did my brain need from me today?
Try a 7-Day Lifestyle Edit
Do not try all twelve strategies tomorrow. Choose one thing that repeatedly makes your life harder and edit it for the next seven days. Create a permanent home for your keys, make a grocery list, prepare breakfast the night before, take one intentional low-stimulation break, go outside each morning, or use a two-minute reset when clutter becomes overwhelming.
Then ask: did this make my day easier? If it did, keep it—and make another small edit. The goal is not to perfectly optimize your life. It is to make your environment work with your recovering brain instead of constantly asking your brain to work harder to manage your environment.
Recovery Happens Between the Appointments
Good concussion care, appropriate testing, and rehabilitation all matter. But recovery does not stop when you walk out of the clinic. The routines you create, the food available when you are exhausted, the way you structure your workload, the quality of your rest, and your willingness to respond when your brain says enough can all influence what daily life feels like during recovery. Find one place where life is harder than it needs to be. Edit it. See what happens. Build from there.
Listen to the Full Conversation
In this episode of Life After Impact: The Concussion Recovery Podcast, I speak with Alex Lombardi, founder of The Brain Edit, about the everyday habits that can support—or unintentionally complicate—life after brain injury. We discuss nutrition, cognitive fatigue, routines, restorative breaks, decision fatigue, over-scheduling rehabilitation, and how to make life more manageable for a recovering brain.
This article is educational and is not a substitute for individualized medical advice. If you are concerned about persistent or worsening symptoms, discuss them with a qualified healthcare professional.