- Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Don't switch over,
you haven't accidentally tuned into GCN.
I know I spend most of my life
poncing around in Lycra over there.
But deep down, I'm a mountain biker as well.
So today, I've got a guest pass
to come onto GMBN and to talk concussion and mountain bikes.
Concussion in sport is becoming a massive issue recently.
Some of the world's biggest contact sports
are having to come to terms with just how serious
hitting your head actually is.
But as mountian bikers,
we can experience concussion as well.
Especially when you fall off as much as I seem to.
Which is why I've been invited by POC
to come to Sweden to talk to Per Hamid Ghatan,
M.D. PhD, to find out more about concussion.
Besides being a leading expert
in head trauma and brain injury,
Ghatan, who has specialized in the rehabilitation
of patients with brain injuries since the late 80s,
is also a member of the POC lab.
The POC lab is a collective
of experts from various industries
that take a holistic approach to safety
to advise POC on the products they produce
to ensure they're the best they can possibly be.
This makes Ghatan the perfect person
to ask a few questions about concussion.
So let's start at the beginning.
What then, is concussion?
- [Ghatan] Concussion is where you have an impact
that transmits energy through the skull into the brain.
- [Presenter] And if you think
you have suffered a concussion,
what are the symptoms?
- If you have a head injury and you sustain a concussion,
you find you have a headache, you might be dizzy,
you might have nausea, you might be light sensitive,
sound sensitive, problems in focusing your attention,
also fatigue and fatigue ability problems.
- [Presenter] But recent high-profile
and sadly tragic stories
around sports injuries have put the issue
of concussion and its related chronic long-term conditions
under a fresh spotlight.
And it isn't as simple or as trivial as we all thought.
- Up til now, we have had the view that 85% recover
within three months and 15% have developed chronic symptoms.
But the challenge today is that, actually,
when we look into statistics and actually
the investigation of patients after concussions,
indicates that there are more people having chronic symptoms
than we thought earlier.
So we need to reevaluate concussions,
that they might be more severe.
You know, because I meet a lot of colleagues now
that are working with sports
and the challenge of concussions.
And in some sports,
the person who has sustained a concussion,
he wants to go, or she wants to go back
straight to the race.
But it's obvious that the person is not functioning properly
so it becomes a conflict between the individual
who wants to continue based on whatever,
you know, competitive people.
It's in American football.
I mean, they have been
neglecting the problem for years, right?
And hockey, this has been underestimated.
But there are more sports, like handball,
also more across motor scooters, et cetera,
that there is a problem in sports.
So I think that today's thought leaders,
when it comes to handling it, is in sports.
And we need to provide them
with better tools to monitor concussions.
And through that, also develop
better assessment methods than we have.
- [Presenter] If you suffer from a concussion,
how long can it last for?
- Because most people think that,
if you have an impact, Bang!
And it's over.
But that's not reality.
The impact, the energy transmitted
through the brain triggers a lot of mechanisms
that can continue for days, weeks, months,
without having, you know,
without any sharing of the tissue, which
with the consequences of having a hemorrhage,
or sort of bleedings or anything like that.
- [Presenter] Most mild concussions will resolve
in a couple of weeks to a few months.
But more severe concussions can lead
to longer term, chronic issues.
If you've had a concussion and you're suffering
from any of the symptoms that can affect balance,
reaction times, and other cognitive abilities,
it's best to stop riding
and go and get properly checked out.
And if you are concussed, make sure you give yourself
plenty of time to properly recover.
- People are not really aware of how to handle themselves
and also the relationship between the symptoms
that they have and what they're doing.
So people return too early back to work
or to studies, and they push themselves.
And then they develop some sort of fatigue syndrome
which might be like a fatigue depression, actually,
where the symptoms increase.
And research today is looking a lot at that concussion,
might trigger an inflammation that continues over time.
And with behavior interacting,
especially if you're not considering
that you need to be active in intervals,
considering having some sort of rest.
Not pushing yourself beyond the threshold
where symptoms increase, but actually
you should be active at an optimal level
rather than at a maximum level.
People push themselves, and then they just see
this kind of stress affecting the consequences
of the concussion, that might actually
make it more chronic.
- [Presenter] As mountain bikers,
we balance risk and reward every time
we head out for a ride.
But sometimes that balance can tip too far,
and we'll have a big off.
Most of us have.
We'll get up, shake it off, and then
probably think nothing more of it.
But if we have hit our head, is that really the end of it?
- [Ghatan] If you have had a concussion
and have recovered, you should be precautious,
because if you have another concussion,
it might add up.
So even if you have a light concussion the second time,
the consequence of having two might make
the consequences much, much worse.
So, I mean, we should be active.
I'm not, in any way, talking against that, the opposite.
But we need to be aware and use protective equipment
to minimize the risk.
I think that's the most important.
And then through design, making it attractive
in using protective measures.
- [Presenter] Making it look cool so people
actually want to wear it.
I mean, I managed to, together with a colleague,
make a, you know,
influence the politician administrator in Sweden
to actually legislate for bicycle helmets for kids.
Because I've seen the consequences.
The price is too high for people.
And so, you know, 20, 30 years ago,
the people, their argument would be that,
"Oh, it affects my hair, you know? My haircut."
I mean, the brain is a super hard disk.
It's all there, right?
So you need to take care of it.
And if people are aware of how sensitive the brain is,
I know that people start using protective equipment.
And in Sweden, we see, especially with the commuters,
we see that they have increased using helmets.
So, I mean, the stupidity is somewhere like in boxing,
where you actually aim at hitting the head of somebody else.
I am against that.
It might be an excellent way of exercising.
But, you know, don't give repetitive violence
to the head because, yeah.
"I was a great sportsman," you know,
an athlete like Muhammad Ali, for instance.
But, you know, the price they pay later on.
And we know that, when it comes to severe brain injuries,
50% of them have amyloid plaque,
which is what you see in Dementia.
So what are the long term consequences?
You might have had sustained a head injury with a concussion
or a moderate head injury when you were in your teens.
But 20 years later,
- [Presenter] That plaque is still there.
- And so far, the healthcare system is not monitoring that.
We are not, we have,
in Sweden, we have these kind of quality,
we collect data, and we follow people, so far,
when it comes to head injuries, up to 15 years now.
And we see that people improve, which is important.
But I have been working 30 years
and I see that people have actually deteriorated
with something called Cognitive Decline.
So you might actually, having head injuries,
you might decrease your buffer capacity of your brain,
in having a lifelong, you know.
If you develop dementia in the age of 70
like some of the Swedish boxers.
Was that because they were boxing
when they were in their twenties?
It's hard to tell, but why take the risk?
- [Presenter] Of course, mountain biking isn't boxing.
No-one is repeatedly punching your head
each and every time we go out for a ride.
But crashes can, and do, happen.
And research shows that wearing a helmet
reduces the risks of serious head injury by nearly 70%.
It's no surprise then, that the expert advice
is that wearing a helmet is an important way
to prevent a concussion.
But just as important is knowing
and riding within our abilities, the terrain,
and being free of distractions.
At the end of the day, it's simply a case of
minimizing risk for maximum fun.
Which is, after all, a big part of why we ride.
I found it absolutely fascinating spending the day
with the experts from POC,
learning so much about an injury that I had years ago.
If you've got a concussion story you want to share with us,
drop it in the comments below.
I'm off to find my Lycra.