Why Concussions Have Been Great for Sports

[Music]

[Applause]

hey guys

my name is macbolin i’m 21 and i study

neuroscience

but i shouldn’t be on this stage

and i shouldn’t be on the stage because

i thought i’d never be able to attend

college

in the fall of 2015 i sustained a series

of injuries that would force me to have

to relearn how to walk

and read again however after two years

of research i’ve identified

that this sports related injury was

entirely preventable

i seek to convince you that uncovering

and eliminating the cultural stigma

towards contact sports has been good

i’d say that brain injuries have been

good for contact sports

however to reiterate i’m not here to say

we should stop playing them

today as we walk through the basics of

concussions how to properly recover from

one

and their long-term impacts i want to

make completely clear that this

conversation made me

and will likely make you uncomfortable

as parents as coaches as fans

most importantly as players this

conversation is hard

however today we’re going to play

through it together

i ask that we all acknowledge the now

millions of athletes now living within a

jarred reality

merely due to the lack of acceptance of

an invisible injury

but remember this is not an argument to

abolish contact sports

but a cautionary tale aimed to urge you

to actively acknowledge the prevalence

of brain injury

while also understanding this isn’t an

injury we should fear with proper

recovery

but first if we’re going to care about

brain injury

we have to understand how the brain

works and thus our story begins with the

neuron

so imagine your head is a giant egg

and within your egg floats a yoke or in

our case a brain

and within that brain are millions of

neurons that act together

as a highway for messaging signals and

these messaging signals control what our

body does

and when it does it for example these

signals control our thought processes

our emotions our sexual orientations and

even regulatory function

like swallowing and breathing but when

we sustain a brain injury

the system becomes damaged dr ann mcgee

defines this damage

as a concussion a concussion is a

rotational or linear force incurred upon

the brain that causes soft brain tissue

to collide with hard inner skull

the yolk of an egg is not the perfect

analogy

but our brains are pretty soft common

concussive symptoms include headache

mild dizziness and mild memory loss

uncommon concussive symptoms include

complete mood disorders like

irritability and aggression

sleep cycle disruption and long-term

psychological disorders

such as ocd ptsd and anxiety depressive

disorder

this is the scope of a brain injury a

brain injury is not a two-day headache

that ends in a perfect recovery

as an undergraduate researcher i’ve

identified that research often doesn’t

follow this

fast and easy pattern either

but what i have identified through my

research is a lesser known more mild

form of concussion

sub-concussive blows a sub-concussive

blow is a micro-injury that often occurs

without treatment

and without acknowledgement it’s like a

small concussion

and the reason this injury scares me so

much is because

athletes have likely sustained thousands

of these injuries over their entire

athletic careers

and most athletes have absolutely no

idea what i’m talking about

referencing back to our egg imagine

shaking it

on the outside it appears completely

pristine bought on the inside

your yolk’s been scrambled but let’s

look at the math

on average a collegiate contact athlete

so a hockey player a soccer player

will sustain about 500 sub-concussive

hits in a season

a football collegiate contact athlete

will sustain about a thousand

researchers have identified that after

1800 hits

neurocognitive damage begins to present

i am not that great at math but i think

it’s pretty obvious

most of us have likely sustained at

least 1800 hits throughout our entire

athletic careers

therefore i believe the reason that

sub-concussive blows and concussions

need more acknowledgement

is not because i believe sustaining two

concussions in high school

is life-ending i believe that sustaining

thousands of blows over our entire

athletic careers

is life changing

yet as i stand here and spill all of the

beans about such a life-changing

injury i know that 33 percent of

concussions go unreported

i know that a athlete is more likely to

hide a concussion

than admit to one because unlike an egg

who you can see structural integrity

slowly deteriorate

you can’t see a brain injury

subjectivity of brain

subjectivity of concussion reporting is

one of the main reasons

that concussions don’t get reported

therefore i believe

that they need more acknowledgement

it seems as though fancy injuries such

as

spraining your ankle or tearing your acl

or tearing your rotator cuff get more

energy or more clout than the term

concussion

for all my contact athletes out there i

know you all went at the mention of a

solid turf burn

when i mention these injuries it should

elicit some form of visceral empathy

but why isn’t that empathy elicited when

i say the term concussion

lack of concussion reporting is not

solely held on the shoulders of players

and coaches

lack of concussion reporting is the

byproduct of our entire culture

turning a blind eye to an injury that’s

just in your head so i have a question

for you

how many of you have sustained a mild

traumatic brain injury

how many of you have sustained a

concussion

what if i told you these injuries were

the same

mild traumatic brain injury and

concussion are considered the same

diagnoses

culturally we’re told that sustaining a

concussion is not that big of a deal

but if we call it what it is which is a

mild traumatic brain injury

maybe we can learn to take it more

seriously

this merging of terms seeks to add more

emphasis as well as acknowledgement

to such an invisible injury and i think

it’s been good for contact sports

but remember the brain is plastic

our brains unlike an egg who can never

recover have the ability to rewire

our brains have the ability to

circumvent

a damaged system neurons do not have the

ability to recover

but structural units within the neuron

do

as an example let’s talk about my own

jarred reality

in the fall of 2015 i was a sophomore in

high school fighting for time as a

varsity goalkeeper

in one of my first games i laid out to

save a ball and as my body collided with

the ground another player took her

cleats and embedded them into

the side of my skull

my body was left in a heap of confusion

and my skull

was deep into the turf field a foul was

called

i was not subbed out and my only support

was a teammate asking if i was okay

of course i was okay because that’s what

i’d been accustomed to believe

so i stood up in a hazel blurred vision

and i took the free kick

i’m hoping by now you’ve identified that

because i’m giving this talk

i likely wasn’t okay

six months after my initial injury i was

in a very similar play when i was

punched so hard in the face i landed on

the back of my neck

two months after that i was in a

high-speed car accident

after all three of these injuries i

continued to convince myself

as well as others that i was completely

okay

of course that’s when i couldn’t walk in

a straight line

and would collapse when i closed my eyes

others finally began to acknowledge my

scrambled yolk

throughout my entire athletic career i

had been primed to continue playing

after sustaining brain injuries

and the only reason i stopped is because

others finally identified

my invisible injury this identification

would prompt a visit to a neurologist

if we’re being honest i did not schedule

the appointment my mom did

this visit would prompt a year and a

half long recovery plan

including cognitive vestibular and

behavioral therapy including a mirror

out of mris

all the hope of regaining my lost

function

and i remember being so angry

why me other friends other athletes have

sustained way more brain injuries than i

had

well we don’t know we don’t know why

some athletes can sustain one hit

and be done for life and others can

sustain thousands

what we do know that repetitive head

injury

exponentially increases the recovery

time as well as severity of

injury i had to relearn how to walk

because i sustained thousands of

cumulative blows over my

entire athletic career

but let’s slingshot back into my own

story

two months into my recovery process my

dad and i were working on re

working on my reflexes he was supposed

to

toss a ball at the palm of my hand and i

was supposed to be able to catch it

the ball would strike my palm my fingers

would delay

and slowly close leading to a dropped

ball

and a dropped confidence i felt i’d

never recover

as an athlete who aspired to play in

college the inability to catch a lofted

tennis ball

was pathetic that week i told my dad i

would never be able to go back to high

school because fun

fact i’d been pulled out of high school

for six months because i couldn’t handle

the

academic rigor of senior year

that later week i would tell my whole

family

that i’d never be able to attend college

because if

i couldn’t catch a lofted tennis ball

how was i going to be able to understand

advanced behavioral neuroscience

but understand our brains are plastic

our brains have the ability to rewire

i’m standing on this stage

if you toss a tennis ball at me i might

catch it

the medicine i needed was time

it takes time for the brain to heal

therefore we need to take our initial

injuries wildly seriously

so athletes like you and athletes like

me

never have to endure the exponential

timeline of recovery

of compounded blows

but i’m not the only one thinking this

and i’m not the only one advocating for

it

the u.s soccer federation has deemed

repeatedly heading the ball is dangerous

and has thus

passed legislation preventing young

athletes from doing so

i believe this has been a great victory

in the sense that it has prevented

unnecessary sub-concussive blows

others believe it’s diminished the game

but i believe what drives us to play our

games

is the ability for us to make our own

decisions is the ability

for us to solve our own problems

so what’s another problem to solve

therefore i believe that sub concussive

blows and mild traumatic brain injuries

have been good for sports

because they prompted us to start a

conversation

about these invincible injuries this

knowledge

has prompted protocols diagnoses and

research plans that have helped players

like me return to the game i love

because it would be hypocritical for me

to stand on the stage and say we should

never play contact sports again

as an individual who had to relearn how

to walk read and re-identify who i was

i chose to continue playing a sport

as a now four-year collegiate athlete i

work with my teammates my coaches

my athletic trainers and my dean of

athletics all to make sure

my egg doesn’t get scrambled

we work as a team to make sure we are

all safe

mild traumatic brain injury and sub

concussive blows are preventable by

not getting your eggs shaken but i

believe it’d be naive to say that this

shake is likely inevitable

therefore like we go to the grocery

store and open up our eggs to make sure

none of them are damaged

we need to occasionally check on our own

egg make sure it isn’t damaged either

so if you only take away a few things

from this grocery list of items

remember that concussions and

sub-concussive blows

are cumulative and they exponentially

increase in severity and recovery time

when we sustain them over

and over and over again

we need proper treatment you need to

admit to the injuries you can’t see

we need to quell the avid resistance

taught to youth athletes to not admit to

these invisible injuries

but most importantly it is our job

as players coaches fans and parents

to identify ways we can decrease the

prevalence of brain injury

within our own sports to make sure so

many eggs

don’t go unnecessarily scrambled

thank you