Football Helmets Do Not Necessarily Protect Against ‘Brain Slosh’
Can woodpeckers and big horn sheep help solve the troubling and often debilitating problem of football concussions? Does a city’s altitude affect the likelihood that its NFL team members will experience concussions? Are better-padded helmets or stricter NFL rules on helmet-to-helmet contact actually solving football’s concussion problems?
Yes, yes, and no, according to a study by Gregory Myer, PhD, FACSM, director of Sports Medicine Research at Cincinnati Children’s. Myer led a team of scientists who analyzed 300 concussions sustained by 284 professional football players during the 2012 and 2013 NFL seasons. Their findings, published in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, include:
- “Brain slosh,” the rapid acceleration and deceleration of the brain inside the skull, is the suspected common cause of concussions – not direct impact to the head.
- Big horn sheep and woodpeckers, which routinely experience tremendous blows to the head at 10 and 20 times that, respectively, of a head-to-head tackle, appear to be protected from brain injury via modulations of their intracranial blood volume that help make a tighter fit inside their skulls prior to impact. This finding could influence concussion prevention strategies that will better protect human athlete’s brains.
- Players in cities at the highest altitudes – Phoenix, Atlanta, Buffalo, Charlotte, Denver, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh – have a combined 30 percent lower odds of sustaining a concussion relative to players in the NFL’s other 23 cities at 644 feet at sea level or lower. At higher altitudes, cerebral blood flow increases, which the research team hypothesized, might influence the brain to fit tighter inside the skull – like a bubble wrapping the brain.
“If we’re going to solve this problem, we have to figure out how to protect the brain from the inside out,” Myer says. “That’s why we think we might be on the leading edge of something that could influence a paradigm shift in concussion-prevention strategies.”
