Measuring impact in head injuries
FREDERICTON (CUP) - Sport
is constantly changing, and so must
safety technology to keep up.
Players are becoming bigger, stronger, faster and are taking hits equally as strong. Padding, guards and most importantly helmets are also becoming stronger to compensate for the increase in physicality.
University of New Brunswick (UNB) centre for the Red Bombers football team, Kyle Wilson, has seen his fair share of hits on the line of scrimmage.
“As a centre, [I'd] say 80 per cent of the contact is to my head,” said Wilson.
Wilson is in his first year with the Bombers, as previous head injuries and a history of concussion sidelined the centre from a year of varsity sport.
“It was summer football, during team New Brunswick tryouts, during a drill a player would run at me to practice a block, and I went down very hard,” he said.
“[I] went back in line, did the drill again and it began to take me a while to get back up.”
Former hockey players Gerry Luliano and Paul Walker created a device that will monitor each and every head impact. They named the impact-tracking device “gForce.”
Head injuries occur in every level of sport, with no limit on severity, but what makes these brain-jarring injuries so risky, if not frightening, isn't the smack to the head. It's the unknown severity that lies within the impact.
Luliano and Walker hope to use the gForce helmet, which fits like a small flash drive inside the helmet, to read every impact to the head, giving readings, statistics and accurate information on the severity of the hit.
GForce has created a network, for which information from the devices can be shared to doctors, scientists and trainers. While beneficial to an individual, this network can be beneficial to the knowledge of head injuries as a whole.
After an appointment with a nurse, Wilson, like so many athletes, was told he suffered a concussion. Wilson, his coach, parents and doctor knew he had been concussed, the severity, however, was not as black and white.
“The scariest thing was how long it takes for your thinking process to go back to normal,” said Wilson.
“For a while, and even sometimes now, I notice my brain almost needs to take an extra step when I'm thinking.”
Luliano and Walker are aware of the severity of concussions and continual knocks to the head, and the impact it can have on an athlete.
Their vision coincides with this realization and states, “Thousands of athletes receive blows to the head each and every day. This activity goes untracked, unreported, and data that would have been invaluable to researchers is wasted. The sooner we can help medical experts understand the causes of head injury in sports, the sooner we can protect our athletes.”
Their statement can mean a lot to athletes like Wilson, who live with the injury and still play, but also for the many yet to experience this life altering injury.
This different direction in sport safety equipment may lead to a safer generation of sport because the mystery of a head injury has been revealed.
Players are becoming bigger, stronger, faster and are taking hits equally as strong. Padding, guards and most importantly helmets are also becoming stronger to compensate for the increase in physicality.
University of New Brunswick (UNB) centre for the Red Bombers football team, Kyle Wilson, has seen his fair share of hits on the line of scrimmage.
“As a centre, [I'd] say 80 per cent of the contact is to my head,” said Wilson.
Wilson is in his first year with the Bombers, as previous head injuries and a history of concussion sidelined the centre from a year of varsity sport.
“It was summer football, during team New Brunswick tryouts, during a drill a player would run at me to practice a block, and I went down very hard,” he said.
“[I] went back in line, did the drill again and it began to take me a while to get back up.”
Former hockey players Gerry Luliano and Paul Walker created a device that will monitor each and every head impact. They named the impact-tracking device “gForce.”
Head injuries occur in every level of sport, with no limit on severity, but what makes these brain-jarring injuries so risky, if not frightening, isn't the smack to the head. It's the unknown severity that lies within the impact.
Luliano and Walker hope to use the gForce helmet, which fits like a small flash drive inside the helmet, to read every impact to the head, giving readings, statistics and accurate information on the severity of the hit.
GForce has created a network, for which information from the devices can be shared to doctors, scientists and trainers. While beneficial to an individual, this network can be beneficial to the knowledge of head injuries as a whole.
After an appointment with a nurse, Wilson, like so many athletes, was told he suffered a concussion. Wilson, his coach, parents and doctor knew he had been concussed, the severity, however, was not as black and white.
“The scariest thing was how long it takes for your thinking process to go back to normal,” said Wilson.
“For a while, and even sometimes now, I notice my brain almost needs to take an extra step when I'm thinking.”
Luliano and Walker are aware of the severity of concussions and continual knocks to the head, and the impact it can have on an athlete.
Their vision coincides with this realization and states, “Thousands of athletes receive blows to the head each and every day. This activity goes untracked, unreported, and data that would have been invaluable to researchers is wasted. The sooner we can help medical experts understand the causes of head injury in sports, the sooner we can protect our athletes.”
Their statement can mean a lot to athletes like Wilson, who live with the injury and still play, but also for the many yet to experience this life altering injury.
This different direction in sport safety equipment may lead to a safer generation of sport because the mystery of a head injury has been revealed.
