How can helmets help

Some "special" sports helmets and other new products claim that they can protect you from concussions. But studies don't back up these claims. As long as a helmet is right for your sport, hasn't been damaged, and is approved by the sport's governing body, it really doesn't matter how much it costs or how fancy it is. Concussions aren't always preventable. One common misconception with respect to wearing a helmet is the idea that a helmet will prevent an individual from having a concussion during a high impact collision.

Depending on the severity of impact, even with a helmet on, an individual can receive a traumatic brain injury. Now, the role of a helmet is to reduce the acceleration of the skull during a collision, absorbing some of the forces being transferred to the brain on impact. Thus decreasing the severity of damage to the brain on high impact collisions and helping to prevent concussions on lower impact collisions.

More traditional helmets were designed to help reduce the acceleration of the skull upon linear impact, meaning the impact is coming from one direction. However, what happens if you fall and hit your head at an oblique angle? Rotational forces transferred to the brain upon impact can cause significant injuries for which a standard helmet does not accommodate.

A study comparing the effectiveness of standard helmets vs. These results indicate that the rotational dampening systems are effective in reducing the likelihood of sustaining a brain injury following impact. Bottlang, Michael, et al. Daneshvar, Daniel H. Therapy Services Aquatic Therapy. However, the growing concussion crisis has led some researchers to try to limit rotational forces as well, with helmet manufacturers now looking to incorporate elements that slide against each other upon impact.

Helmets, of course, are good for protecting against brain injuries. Different impacts cause different head movements, and different head movements result in different injuries. Help concussion research Donate Volunteer. QBI newsletters Subscribe. Download the pdf. Skip to menu Skip to content Skip to footer. Site search Search. This is an interesting debate. One study shows that helmet-to-helmet collisions were the most common contact mechanism in football concussions. Therefore, could it be possible that improving protective gear actually puts them more at risk?

Helmets were never meant to protect against concussion, but they can protect against more severe head injuries. Hard helmets have shown to protect against impact injuries — such as a direct hit to the head — and can reduce the risk of cuts, scrapes, scratches, skull fractures or bleeding in the brain.

Most helmets have a hard outer shell and inner layer of foam or other softer material. The outer shell is made to dissipate force, and spread the impact of the force over a larger area. Rather than creating a centre point of impact — which could cause the skull to break or fracture — the helmet spreads out the surface area of that impact. It helps to reduce the amount of force on the skull itself. At the same time, the materials on the inside reduce the peak impact by absorbing some of the impact.

Helmets do little to address the rotational forces, and stretching and shearing of brain cells. Please make sure you wear a helmet as recommended, and during activities with the potential for head impact with hard objects. This includes football, hockey, cycling, skiing, motor sports, snowboarding, and many others.