@Louis-1988:
A little off-topic, but this is as good a chance as any to get this off my chest.
The equipment is the core issue here; instead of trying to make equipment safer, the safety should be taken out of the equipment. The real root cause of the concussions is the false sense of security players have when wearing helmets. When the first thing players do when they put on a helmet is headbutt each other, and continue to headbutt each other throughout the duration of a game, you know the helmets are doing their job too well. We need to look at going back to the days of using leather helmets, or a foam approximation that comes close to leather. In the days of leather helmets, players didn't try to tackle using their heads, because it hurt too much. Players today are going for the kill shot using their head as the tip of the spear, because they have faith that the helmet, with all of its padding and hard outer shell, will protect them. We need to remove this false sense of security. Instead of trying to fix helmets and make them safer, we need to make them less safe in order to encourage a more intelligent style of game play. It may sound counter-intuitive at first, but I believe this change would curb the concussion epidemic and ultimately save a lot of lives.
Yeah, awareness is a big deal because people don't know that even when they're wearing hard pieces of material that there'd be long term effects, but hey people like the brutality so let's roll with it. But I definitely don't agree that removing protection is the way to go here.
@maxterdexter:
The problem is that no matter what ammount of protection they surround their heads, the brain still bounces and moves inside when the player rams at something.
I heard once that the brain doesn't register pain on itself, so a concussion is painless, but the desorientation and shit are there.
Remember that the pain exist so that people know to identify it and stop it, So instead of keep going and protect the cranium from pain, exposing the brain to greater damage, just take out the helmet, and force the players to face the pain, I.E. they won't and the brain is safer.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Imagine an Egg, perfectly fitted in an case, then shake it, the shell will be fine, but the yolk.. not so much. Brain == yolk.
And yeah you're basically bouncing it around. The brain doesn't have any sensory nerves to itself, so it won't feel anything, but there are certain easy tests medical people can do to check for early signs of concussions. Not that those would be done too regularly after games, though, I suppose.
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