A Son's Concussion Led Dr. Frances Meredith to Rethink Recovery
After her son was sent back into a game while concussed, a North Carolina functional medicine physician set out to make head injury care proactive.
On June 23, 2023, Bryce Meredith went up for a header and came down unconscious. The 6 foot 5 midfielder, now with Spokane Velocity FC in Washington State, had collided head to head with another player. He was helped off, asked to follow a finger and asked whether he felt OK. With adrenaline running high, he said yes and went back on.
Within minutes he knew something was wrong. He took a knee and left the game.
His mother, Dr. Frances Meredith, an internal medicine and functional medicine physician in Cary, North Carolina, says that day changed the direction of his career and her own. A loss of consciousness clearly met the definition of a concussion, she says, and he should never have been allowed back on the field.
The research supports her. A University of Pittsburgh study of 69 young athletes, published in Pediatrics in 2016, found that those who kept playing after a concussion took 44 days on average to recover, twice the 22 days for athletes removed from play right away.
Head injury is getting more attention, and Dr. Meredith says the concern now reaches well past the single big hit. She points to the cumulative effect of repeated subconcussive blows, impacts that never produce a diagnosed concussion, and their link to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the neurodegenerative disease found in many former professional athletes. Those impacts, she notes, begin in childhood sports.
Sport is only part of the picture. In 29 years of practice, Dr. Meredith says she has often traced the moment a patient's health turned for the worse to a head impact that happened in ordinary life, whiplash in a car accident or a fall on the ice. Most concussions, she says, happen outside athletics.
As a functional medicine physician with Stribling Springs Wellness, she looks for root causes. During her son's recovery, she began asking whether anyone had made a nutritional blend for the moments right after a head impact. She concluded no one had. She and her colleague Dr. Robert Baric spent hundreds of hours on research and several rounds of formulation.
The result is OnHand, a powdered head impact recovery support blend that launched on October 22 through her company, MyConcussionDR. It contains 12 ingredients aimed at what she describes as three metabolic shifts that begin within minutes of impact.
The first is energy. The brain prefers glucose, she explains, and after an impact its ability to take up glucose falters, which she connects to familiar symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, trouble with screens, balance problems and disrupted sleep and mood. She calls ketones the brain's backup generator, and the blend pairs them with acetyl-L-carnitine and magnesium. The second is inflammation, which she says serves a purpose but can cause lasting damage if it goes unchecked. For that the blend includes omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, curcumin, N-acetylcysteine and glycine. The third is clearing the waste products that build up in a working brain, with ingredients including N-acetylcysteine, trimethylglycine, choline, vitamin C and magnesium.
The blend is dosed by weight and is meant for people over 6 years old and 80 pounds. Dr. Meredith says it is designed to be taken before activities with a high chance of impact, such as a game, practice or mountain biking, and kept ready for right after a head injury.
"We knew the science existed. What did not exist was something simple enough to keep on hand before you ever need it," Dr. Meredith says.
OnHand is a dietary supplement. The FDA does not review supplements for safety or effectiveness before they are sold, and no supplement is approved to treat or prevent a concussion. Anyone with a suspected head injury should stop the activity and be evaluated by a medical professional.
The larger gap, in Dr. Meredith's view, is information. Many patients, she says, still hear advice that is decades old, such as staying in a dark room, being woken every hour and avoiding exercise. Current CDC guidance for children and teens has moved away from strict rest, recommending no more than two to three days of rest before a gradual return to activity.
She has spent recent years making that case in public. She wrote the book Concussion911, on mild traumatic brain injury from impact to recovery. With Dr. Baric, she presented "Beyond the Brain: Exploring the Systems Affected by TBI" at the North Carolina Brain Injury Conference in Wilmington in April 2025. She has also discussed functional medicine and sports medicine on podcasts including Prime Health Podcast and Behind The Sports Medicine.
Her closing argument borrows from cardiac care. Most people know what to do when someone collapses with a heart attack. Call 911 and start CPR. She wants families to think about head impact with the same readiness, because for active families it is a question of when, not if.
"Every family, every veteran, every athlete deserves access to immediate tools and knowledge after a head impact," she says.
About Dr. Frances Meredith
Dr. Frances T. Meredith, MD, is co-founder and medical director of MyConcussionDR and Stribling Springs Wellness in Cary, North Carolina.
Internal medicine and functional medicine. Certified through the Institute for Functional Medicine. 29 years in practice.
Reported, fact-checked and edited by The Script Pad's editorial staff.
This article is for professional education and does not replace clinical judgment. Treatment decisions should be based on the individual patient and current guidelines.
