Professor Utter
PEP 351
20 November 2013
Concussions
With all the excitement sports in our country and even around the world bring, some horrific injuries occur due to the competiveness of each participant. The human body can only take so much, and seems like a big target when competition is involved between two or more teams. An injury that has evolved the most out of all the injuries that can occur to someone is the concussion. According to the National Athletic Trainers' Association and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, concussions in athletes is becoming the most common injury found compared to some other sports related injury. In the past, if you got hit in the head really hard you went out till your headache went away then you went back in the game. Nobody back then realized how much damage that hard hit to the head really did to you, or how long you should stay out for and recover. Due to advances in technology we now realize our philosophy “rub some dirt on it” or “shake it off” especially when it comes to head injuries is something you should never do. Due to improvements in technology and our scientist we are starting to realize and go deeper into how severe a concussion is or traumatic brain injury (TBI). By definition, a concussion occurs when there is a rapid acceleration or deceleration of the head. The brain moves or rotates inside the skull and different parts of it move against each other. Symptoms include headaches, confusion, amnesia and sensitivity to light or noise and can last days, weeks or months. According to the article “The Science of Hard Knocks” when this mild to severe blow to the head occurs what happens is the brain jiggles inside of the skull reorganizing blood flow. This causes no physical symptoms you can see so doctors can only depend on the information the athlete tells them. This is a huge problem because athletes being as competitive as they are, they may