I have all of my research in place now, so I can finally answer my main inquiry question! To do this, first, I had to look over my research and see if there was anything else I needed. After that, my mom and I looked at my main inquiry question and subquestions and came up with an outline. After that, it took me 3 days to write a rough draft. My mom, Ms. Edwards and I all reviewed and revised that draft and I figured out that some things needed to be added and some things that didn’t make sense needed to be deleted from the essay. When I was revising, I found I typed too quickly and had many typos and mistakes, and things that didn’t make sense. I learned the importance of revising to get a more polished final product. Here is my essay, that answers my inquiry question:
How do helmets protect athletes from traumatic brain injury, how has the design improved over the years, and how can it be further improved?
Traumatic brain injury has been a major problem for many years but only recently has it made it to the public arena, and it has done so with the help of sports. On the news, anchors have been talking about concussive sports and how many people are getting injured. As a hockey player myself, it was suggested that I get a baseline concussion study done. For my Capstone project, I decided to research traumatic brain injury. My main inquiry question is, “How do helmets protect athletes from traumatic brain injury, how has the design improved over the years, and how can it be further improved?” I am interested in this topic because I am a hockey player, and hockey has the highest occurrence of concussion in any college sport, and also because I am interested in biology.
When I started my research on this topic, I knew almost nothing about traumatic brain injury. To begin my research, I first needed to learn about the brain itself. The brain is the most important organ in our body. Everything we think, do, and feel is controlled by our brain. Being the most vital organ, it has lots of protection, like spinal fluid and a hard skull. But sometimes the brain can still get hurt. Traumatic brain injury (“TBI”) is any type of trauma to the brain. It can be as minor as a mild concussion, where the patient suffers a bad headache, and as severe as massive bleeding in the brain, leading to coma or death. Although in sports people sometimes use TBI and concussion interchangeably, a concussion is just one type of TBI, and the type most commonly suffered by athletes during a game. Some common causes of concussion in athletes are player collisions, falling and hitting their head or their brain banging against their skull from being shaken, fights and ruffing, and more.
When you get a concussion, it alters the way your brain functions. You may feel tired, dizzy, have blurry vision, and be sensitive to light. A concussion can be diagnosed using radiology, such as MRI scans and CT scans, by using a baseline test, or by clinical diagnosis. The baseline test works where you do a test before there is an injury for a baseline, and when they think you have a concussion, you do it again. If you get a lower score, you may have a concussion. A concussion can have nasty symptoms, such as headaches, memory problems, behavior changes, anxiety, and even depression. Concussions are underdiagnosed because some signs do not show up on a scan. This is called a sub-radiographic concussion. Sometimes an athlete will do something called “gaming the system” when it comes testing for a concussion. Some athletes will intentionally do poorly on the baseline test so when they have a concussion and do poorly, it just looks normal. This can lead to more injuries, because the athlete is not being treated and is continuing to play their sport, possibly making their concussion more severe. The treatment for a concussion can vary from rest to surgery.
Concussions may seem very scary and dangerous, but there are ways to protect against them. Athletes can wear protective gear, like mouth guards, helmets, and padding. Research has shown that helmets protect the brain in many ways. They do so by having a hard shell that protects the athlete from skull fractures. The padding (sometimes foam, sometimes gel) inside the helmets slows the impact by being squishy. The squishy padding lets your head slowly collapse into it, and absorbs some of the impact. All this protects your brain from being shaken and hit against the skull. But sports helmets weren’t always this good. Early helmets were used for battle. They were made out of metal to protect the skull from being impaled by a sword, mace, gun, and other weapons. When they came to be used in sports, helmets were just an outer shell. The shell’s purpose was to prevent skull fractures. They did not, however, protect against concussions and other TBI’s. This is because early helmets didn’t have the components of today’s helmets. The first sports helmets were made of leather. Then, they were simply a plastic shell. Today’s helmets have a hard, plastic shell to protect from skull fractures. The plastic shell is also slippery so it won’t grip other helmets or the ground and hurt the neck or twist the head which would further complicate a concussion. Then there is the foam or gel. The foam/gel slows the impact and softens the impact for your head. Next to the foam, there is air, so the foam or gel has a place to collapse into, absorbing the impact and lessening the impact on the brain. The final part is the helmet straps, which keep it on your head, and the cage, that protects your face. Most helmets should be specially fitted to each athlete that wears it for the helmet to offer the most protection.
When I visited Virginia Tech for my research, I built my own helmet. To do this I needed to take foam and put it in the helmet shell. I learned that the placement of padding is crucial. I also learned that if the helmet is too tight, the protective effects are minimized. I learned this because I was lucky enough to get to test the helmet I made on the professional testing machines, and compare it with a professional helmet, which was the “control” in the experiment. My first helmet performed better than the professional helmet. After that, my helmets did not perform as well because I put too much padding in the helmet, making it too tight. It demonstrated that when there is no place for the foam to collapse into, it doesn’t protect well during impact.
For a helmet to be legally marketed, it needs to pass a minimum safety standard. Some companies come to the lab to test their helmets before they release them to make sure they work well and do their job. The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab tests helmets that are already on the market, and also researches improvements that can be made in the future. The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab provides uniform, accurate testing in the lab and also on the field. They do so with sensor helmets, which are used by the athletes at Virginia Tech and certain other colleges that have elected to participate in this study. The helmets have sensors in them, so when the player is hit, it takes the impact data, sends it to the lab, and the lab studies the type of hit that caused the injury. By understanding this, they can develop even better helmets. If someone gets a concussion, the researchers at the lab will watch a video of the game and see what hit caused that and cross-reference it with the data they collect from the helmet sensors.
In the lab, they have various testing machines. When they test a helmet to rate it, it takes a lot of preparation, because the machine settings must be uniform, data collection must be standardized and controls must be the same each time as well, so the testers are comparing apples to apples. Otherwise, the data collected isn’t reliable for rating. First, they have to put the sensors in the mannequin heads. This seems simple, but it takes about 15 minutes. After doing that, they have to decide which helmet they are testing. They put it on the mannequin and open the correct computer program. Then the procedure is different depending on which machine is being used. There is a magnetized one, where you also use another head without a sensor. Then the magnet forces one head into the helmet head they are testing. There is another one that tests bike helmets and the helmet falls from ten feet in the air onto concrete. Another testing machine has the same concept as the bike helmets, but it simulates falling on the turf or ice. Another one mimics being tackled. It does so by using gas to push forward a metal bar into the helmet. There is a machine that is is almost the same as the falling ones, but this one is connected to a bar and simulates falling backward. My favorite testing machine is when the head is on a bar and a pendulum falls and hits it. After each test, the impact data is sent to the computer. They do many tests in many different positions, and then they rate the helmets. Many of the machines are gravity based. This is because gravity is reliable and does not change, so the answers are more accurate than when using another method, such as gas. The data is collected in a graph. They record the height of the impact, for example, 40G’s. G stands for the constant force of gravity, or 9.8 meters per second squared, so 40G’s means 40 times 9.8 meters per second squared.
There are many challenges that the industry faces when it comes to developing and testing helmets. Athletes often don’t want the impact data reported because if the impact was too high, the player might have a concussion. They don’t want people to know this because then the coach might take them out of the game. They also worry that coaches may not draft them for a professional team if they have a history of concussions. If they are a professional athlete, they worry that multiple concussions will be taken into consideration when they negotiate how much money they get in their contract. Also, sports teams don’t want big helmets on their players because that might make them slower. The problem is, the best sports’ helmet of all time is a football helmet and weighs over 5 ½ pounds. But helmets are getting better. There is a new helmet being designed and tested that uses fluid instead of foam! The creators of this helmet did this to mimic the spinal fluids that protect our brain. This helmet is estimated to be one of the best helmets ever and may protect athletes even better from concussions. It is not yet on the market, but I look forward to seeing how it compares to other helmets when it is released.
With all of my findings in place, I can answer my main inquiry question. Helmets protect athletes from TBI by providing a buffer that absorbs the energy of an impact and minimizes how much of that energy is transferred to the brain. Helmets have improved greatly over time. The old helmets only protected athletes from skull fractures, and now helmets protect you from skull fractures, TBIs, and more. They can be further improved by using fluids in the helmet, for that would make the helmet lighter, and the fluids would move around on impact, having the same effect as collapsing foam or gel. In my opinion, to even further improve it, we could use foam and fluids. I also learned that players should always use a protective mouthguard, even in non-helmet wearing sports.
This topic is important to the general population because traumatic brain injury doesn’t only occur in sports but also in life. According to Dr. Odette Harris, a Stanford professor and neurosurgeon, “Most TBIs aren’t sports related, they’re life-related.” Things like falling down the stairs, a horseback riding accident, hitting your head at the bottom of the pool, and car accidents are more common causes of TBI than anything else. This is a very dangerous thing in the community, and people need to know about it. When it comes to sports, we assume people can afford protective gear, like helmets, but that’s not true everywhere. For example, in the developing world, where sports are just as popular as they are here, things like helmets aren’t as easily accessible. Treatment for TBIs in some of these areas is also not as available.
At my site visit, I learned many things I had no idea existed. I learned there are so many areas of study regarding helmets. I also was surprised to hear that no helmet can protect you completely; all they can do is lower your risk of a TBI. There are also very few studies on children’s helmets, and I believe that more research should be conducted on this. In addition, the risk of concussion isn’t limited to helmet-wearing sports. One of the sports with the highest rates of concussion is cheerleading! Studies are being conducted on many non-helmet wearing sports, to better understand how to protect athletes in these sports as well.
In conclusion, with all the information about TBIs I learned, I will change my behavior as an athlete, by being more careful and following all the rules and safety precautions I took for granted. I will change my behavior as a student by researching using the multiple methods I learned from my Capstone project, so I can get the most complete results, resulting in more thorough research projects. I would also like to continue to follow this area of study and raise concussion safety awareness among student-athletes.