Bang!

Nope, this isn’t about guns or even sex! This one is all about too many parents’ worst nightmares and too many professional athletes’ greatest fear: the short and long-term risks from concussions. Football, rugby, soccer, lacrosse, ice hockey, and the list goes on and on. Brain bruises, speech impairment, paralysis, emotional instability, suicidal tendencies, memory loss and even death. It is part of everyday sports news, from the litigation filed against the NFL by legions of ex-players, to lifetime trauma born on the practice and competitive fields of high schoolers and college students everywhere.

Medical researchers and equipment designers obsess over what to do to minimize the injury resulting from this ubiquitous and too frequently catastrophic occurrence. The focus has been on helmets, naturally, since this is a trauma to the head. What is a concussion, anyway? WebMD.com: “A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury that is caused by a blow to the head or body, a fall, or another injury that jars or shakes the brain inside the skull. Although there may be cuts or bruises on the head or face, there may be no other visible signs of a brain injury.

“You don't have to pass out (lose consciousness) to have a concussion. Some people will have obvious symptoms of a concussion, such as passing out or forgetting what happened right before the injury. But other people won't. With rest, most people fully recover from a concussion. Some people recover within a few hours. Other people take a few weeks to recover…

“Your brain is a soft organ that is surrounded by spinal fluid and protected by your hard skull. Normally, the fluid around your brain acts like a cushion that keeps your brain from banging into your skull. But if your head or your body is hit hard, your brain can crash into your skull and be injured.” It’s the shaking that causes the problem, the result of forward inertia suddenly stopped. The body may hit that wall, but the brain’s inertia continues to carry it impactfully into the skull.

What’s even worse, the vast majority of concussions simply go undetected. Violent contact sports can make distinguishing a normal hit from a concussion hard to determine, but not only is the initial hit dangerous, but once that brain injury has occurred, continuing to expose the head to further injury without allowing healing increases the chance of truly serious and often permanent damage exponentially. Think about professional football for example, an extreme, I’ll give you that, but the thuds and crunches, the moans and contact sounds, tell you how repeatedly violent that game is. And even with the most modern helmets available, that brain-shaking cannot be fully contained. But maybe the answer isn’t just in improving helmet technology.

If only we knew when a hit likely produces a concussion, we could at least stop further contact playing until a true diagnosis were made. Well, here research may actually hold some near-term hope. It comes in the form of an American-made mouth guard that contains an internal measurement detector. “The FITGuard has a green LED strip on the front that turns blue when it detects a medium force impact and red when there’s an above-50 percent chance the athlete has suffered a concussion. The athlete can then use an app to download a data log showing why the guard is displaying a given color. The data will also be uploaded to a central database to help the FIT team improve the device.” Huffington Post, June 7th.

“Unlike a structural injury that involves a ligament tear or a shoulder sprain, brain injuries are not always apparent or easily detectable. Athletes continue playing, at times, without knowing they are at risk for further debilitating outcomes. Among 38 million boys and girls that participate in organized youth sports and 135 million participants (ages 6+) in team sports in the U.S., concussions are one of the most commonly reported injuries.” The FITGuard website tells us, and they note that there are an estimated 3.8 million concussions in the United States every year, that almost half of all concussions are not reported by the athletes who incurred them, and that the under-18 demographic has the highest incidence of sport-related fatalities.

The product isn’t yet officially on the market yet, but when it arrives, I strongly recommend that every athlete who plays a contact sport figure out how to get one… fast! It may not be a full solution, but if the trials continue to work, it’s a damned good start! I’m seeing some very interesting demands of management from professional players’ unions coming up in the near term!

I’m Peter Dekom, and technology sometimes provides wondrous unexpected results.