Recovering from an injury can be challenging in a mountain town that’s built around physical activity. Take Melanie Webb, who built her life around sport. She grew up in Orem playing competitive softball and volleyball before transitioning into endurance sports, snowboarding, backpacking and s trength training in her adult life.  Now a personal trainer and the founder of WebbWell in Park City, Webb’s work and social life revolve around physical activity. She builds her friendships on skis and her career through hours of repetitive movement helping others prepare their bodies for the things they love to do in the mountains. “I am the person who’s drawn to Park City because I can connect with people over our shared love of staying active in our life,” said Webb. “For me, my body has always been my greatest tool. It’s how I experience everything.” Melanie Webb’s background spans athletic training, environmental science and public health, experiences that she says help inform her coaching approach that prioritizes functional exercise and longevity. Credit: Photo courtesy of Melanie Webb But when Webb suffered multiple concussions in 2019, a lot changed. While she had experienced injuries and illness that kept her from activity before, they were nothing like trying to recover from this invisible injury to her head, she said.  After her first concussion that year, from colliding with a glass wall, Webb initially brushed her symptoms off and didn’t seek immediate medical care, embarrassed about the circumstances of her injury. Three weeks later, she suffered a second concussion in a car accident that worsened her condition.  The close timing of the injuries pushed her into post-concussive syndrome, she said. What followed were months of severe symptoms, including prolonged insomnia, intense nervous system dysregulation, and cognitive changes that affected her speech and ability to find words.  “Your brain, when it’s that impaired, can’t tell you that it’s injured,” said Webb.  Activities that once helped her regulate stress or clear her brain fog like hiking or skiing began to make her symptoms worse. For the first time, recovery wasn’t something she could just power through. The injury forced Webb to confront what it meant to live in a mountain town when she could no longer participate in the activities that had anchored her sense of place and belonging. “You try to do the things that have always made you feel better, and that’s actually the last thing you should be doing. I’d go for a hike and crash for three days,” she said. “You have to manage everything you do — sleep, movement, food, who you talk to and for how long.” She had to step away from her usual social circles and daily routines. Without visible signs of injury, she struggled to explain why she couldn’t simply return to her normal pace or why doing so made her worse. It was not just the loss of sport, she said, but the experience of watching life continue around her while she was forced to slow down. “The hardest part was the identity part and not being able to do the things I moved here to do. I moved here to train people. I moved here to ski and hike and paddle. And all of that had to stop,” said Webb. Her symptoms were severe enough that she wasn’t able to work at all during her recovery, and her care team didn’t clear her to return even part time until roughly nine months later — just in time for the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and related shutdowns. That made an already isolating recovery feel even more disconnected, she said.  “It feels like you’re in the timeout box, but everyone else is still out there playing,” said Webb.  It wasn’t until Webb connected with Dr. Lauren Ziaks that her recovery began to feel possible by giving her a clearer understanding of what was happening in her body and how to move forward without worsening her symptoms, she said. Ziaks, a Parkite, helped her understand that her symptoms of sleep disruption, dizziness, vision problems, cognitive strain, mood changes and exercise intolerance were all connected through her nervous system. Lauren Ziaks is a physical therapist and certified athletic trainer in Park City who specializes in treating chronic concussion symptoms, dysautonomia and long COVID, applying a nervous system-focused approach to help patients navigate long-term recovery. Credit: Photo courtesy of Dr. Lauren Ziaks Ziaks said that many patients with chronic concussion symptoms experience nervous system dysregulation, meaning the systems that control heart rate, balance, vision, stress response and energy use stop communicating efficiently. “The nervous system is a currency problem,” said Ziaks. “It’s not like a muscle injury, where pushing a little bit helps you get stronger. With the nervous system, if you overspend, you actually delay recovery.” Ziaks said this concept can be especially hard for people like Webb, who spent years associating effort with progress. “Humans are predictive models,” Ziaks said. “If pushing worked before in school, in sports, in work, that’s what your brain expects to work again. But with these conditions, pushing is often the exact wrong strategy.” For Webb, treatment involved several layers of care. She and Ziaks worked on vision and vestibular therapy to address balance and eye-tracking problems. Webb underwent cognitive testing and mental health support to address the anxiety, depression and trauma that developed alongside her physical symptoms. But Webb said it was equally important to learn how to pace daily life. “She had to learn how to stay inside her energy envelope,” Ziaks said. “That means stopping before symptoms flare, not after.”  Ziaks is no stranger to the challenges patients face in recovery from a high-pressure, fast-paced environment, having moved to Park City in 2012 to work with the U.S. snowboard team. But after experiencing her own brain injury in 2014 and struggling to find effective care, she began rethinking how concussion treatment was delivered in Utah.  “I couldn’t get good treatment,” she said. “That changed how I think about everything.” She began learning and integrating therapies that haven’t been widely standardized, including vision and vestibular rehabilitation. Ziaks developed her concussion care approach in outpatient clinics before expanding that work within Intermountain Health, where she has treated complex neurological conditions for nearly a decade. Today, Ziaks treats patients with chronic concussion symptoms, dysautonomia and long COVID. Ziaks said dysautonomia, a condition where the autonomic nervous system stops working properly, often becomes the driver of lingering symptoms from events like concussion and COVID.  “Most people with chronic concussion symptoms have some degree of dysautonomia,” she said. “And up to 70 percent of people with long COVID do, too.” Ziaks has focused her research to help develop open-access treatment protocols so providers outside Park City can better recognize these conditions and their intersections and have a ready pathway to treat them. “My goal isn’t for everyone to come to me,” she said. “It’s to create more providers who know what to look for and how to help.” Melanie Webb says her experience recovering from concussion changed how she approaches risk and rest in her daily life, influencing how she stays active in Park City and how she supports her clients often facing their own physical limitations. Credit: Photo courtesy of Melanie Webb After seeing Ziaks and her care team, Webb began to regain stability by changing how she engaged with activity. She reintroduced exercise with new limits and paid closer attention to recovery. She still skis but avoids busy trails on crowded days and manages risk differently. And now, her experience has helped inform how she approaches her work as a personal trainer. Looking back, Webb said her recovery required the same discipline she had developed as an athlete. She just had to apply it differently. “I took all the discipline, drive and determination I had developed as an athlete and redirected it toward healing,” Webb said. “I built a strategy with my care team and executed it the same way I would a training plan. I’m convinced that without that focus and consistency, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” The post Park City trainer navigates recovery in a ski town appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less