PETER CHIARELLI: We can't let sports writers be the ones that make the determination on
whether or not an individual should play or not because of the performance that they have
on a particular weekend.
[MUSIC]
PETER CHIARELLI: Concussion is where I got started on this whole journey.
We attract folks into the military that play sports where there are, you know, the kind
of concussive events occur.
High contact sports.
Kids who have played football their entire life.
And we know in some instances they come into the service with 2 or 3 or 4 concussions.
Both Jim Amos, who was the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps at the time, and I were
very concerned that we were, in fact, having soldiers get concussions downrange and instead
of pulling them out of the fight and giving their brain enough time to heal , anywhere
from 1 week to 2 weeks, that we were putting them right back in the fight.
And the sad stories we were seeing was the kid who went out on a Monday and got a concussion,
basically followed what his football coach had told him because we didn't have better
protocols in place, shook it off, went back in the game, and on Wednesday got a second
concussion.
Those were the ones we saw at Landstuhl with serious cognitive issues that..that would
haunt them for their entire lives.
So we put in place a protocol downrange after talking to many civilian experts in the field,
I think we even beat the NFL in doing it, that said that anybody that was in a vehicle
that was damaged by an explosion, anybody that was within 50 meters of an explosion,
anybody who was in a building with an explosion, anybody who lost consciousness for any period
of time or anyone who was directed by their commander, was evaluated for possible concussion
immediately after the event and held out for 24 hours before they were allowed to return
to their unit and then evaluated a second time.
The importance of that is that many times, the symptoms of a concussions do not show
themselves until up to 24 hours after the event and when I was able to show a soldier
three pictures of three brains--one normal brain of an individual, this normal brain
using positron emission tomography looked like a furnace.
It was all reds and yellows, all burning that energy.
You put glucose in somebody's body using positron emission tomography and they took a picture
of an individual who had been comatose for 5 days in a hospital bed.
Their brain was all dark purples and blues.
The brain was shutting down, healing itself.
Then the third picture was of a football player and this football player had been injured
with 2 minutes and 42 seconds to go in the first half.
He was allowed to come out and play the second half of the game and when he was changing
out that night a trainer came up to him and said, "Hey listen, if you display any of the
following symptoms the next morning I want you to go to the emergency room."
You know the rest of the story.
He did, he went to the emergency room, they took a picture of his brain using positron
emission tomography and I defy anybody to tell me the difference between the individual
who was comatose for 5 days and the individual who walked into the emergency room and told
the doctor about the symptoms that they were experiencing---their brains looked identical.
There's a belief that a lot of people have that if you just improve the helmets --- the
helmets that soldiers wear, the helmets that football players wear --- that you're gonna
solve this problem.
To me the helmet is never going to do anything but cause the problem to be greater, particularly
when it comes to contact sports because the helmet is often used as a weapon.
It's used as the tool that causes the concussion.
The brain is already inside a helmet called the skull and the real damage that is done
with traumatic brain injury is the movement, the acceleration, of that brain inside that
skull.
So I don't believe that helmets are ever going to solve the problem.
I think the NFL has taken some great strides in changing the rules.
I wish the same would happy in hockey.
I wish the same would happen in girls' soccer.
The only way that you are able to convince people that concussion or post-traumatic stress
is a serious serious injury that must be treated and taken care of is through education.
You've gotta take the time to educate people and you can't let sports writers be the ones
that make the determination on whether or not an individual should play or not because
of the performance that they have on a particular weekend.
This is really really serious stuff.
I'm General Pete Chiarelli and I'm commanding you to subscribe to THNKR.