Importance of Concussion Prevention

All right. So, just look straight at me, and I’m just going to shine a light in your eyes. Concussion is a significant injury to the brain. Even though we call it a mild traumatic brain injury, that just means that there’s no bleed, there’s no structural damage, but it’s really damage on the level of how the nerves talk to each other in the brain and how energy is being used in your brain. We’re constantly being challenged and amazed by what the brain can do and pick up, but we need to address it like every other body part that gets injured. You know, it’s encompassed by a skull, and oftentimes we don’t see that swelling. We don’t see everything. So, you really have to be the detective and look at the symptoms and probe a little bit deeper into those.

While you’re in the middle of it, you think you’re never going to be the same again, but you will get better.

Every memory, every thought, every dream, your very essence exists because of your brain. One impact can change your life in an instant.

No matter the terrain, no matter the conditions, one piece of gear should always be worn. Your helmet.

My name is Jeremy Jones. Cody Johnson. My name is El Sogstead. I’m Connor Lundine. And helmets are cool. Helmets are cool. And helmets are cool.

Doing family practice, I discovered this field of sports medicine, and I really connect with that active lifestyle and having people be as active as they can be and stay healthy with it. There’s definitely a personal connection for me with my work, both through my own experience as an athlete and through my three daughters who are 15, 18, and 21, and all the sports they’ve been involved with up through the years. For both me and for our family, it’s really important that you put your helmet on as soon as you leave the house. I think we’ve all experienced where we went out to the trail and forgot something at home. Even if it’s the helmet and it’s in my family, anyone close to me, they’re going back home and getting that helmet because you never know when it’s going to happen.

I got a concussion a few years ago, and it was a pretty severe concussion. I remember it just feeling like there was kind of a separate me. There was someone inside me thinking, but I couldn’t get the words out that wanted to come out. You know, I thought, is this it? Am I going to heal from this? What do I have to do? And I remember just sitting around for weeks on end and waking up in the morning and being like, “Oh, am I better?” And nope, I still can’t function very well. People talk to me, and I’m lagging in words. I’m not responding to them in an appropriate manner. You get more emotional. There are things that you just can’t control yourself, and it’s a really weird place to be in.

Concussion occurs when there’s an acceleration-deceleration movement. The brain actually can have an impact directly on the front or side, so there’s that sense of shear. It can also have a rotational component as well, and that creates inflammation in the brain. Symptoms of a concussion can be one or multiple things. You have a headache, you feel nauseous, you might throw up, you have trouble really knowing where you are and what’s going on. Memory loss may be part of it. You may be knocked out and have loss of consciousness, but you may not at all. You may have dizziness, feeling really off balance. A lot of times there’s emotional ability where you feel tearful or angry or sad and just have a hard time controlling your emotions.

On average, patients will come into therapy for one to three months seeing the different practitioners. We’re going to help you get through this because you can’t quite negotiate through life yourself. So, we come together with our whole team—different rehab modalities, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy—and we all try to help guide you through that and get you to the highest level of function that you can be while the brain is slowly recovering. We try to get the arms moving as well.

Unfortunately, once you get one concussion, you do have a significant increased risk of getting a second one. So, one of the things we take very seriously is to make sure you are 100% fully recovered before you go back out and do things, and maybe you even change your approach a little bit to be a little bit more cautious about how you could end up hitting your head again.

I’d say the hard part about the mountains for me is you never know when bad things are going to happen. Some of the scariest things that I’ve seen or been a part of have been at the resort, on a groomer, in mellow terrain. So, you can never really let your guard down. I try not to think too much of what the could have, should have, would have, because I’ve had some close calls in life. Instead of worrying about, oh my god, I’m just so lucky, and fret over what would have happened, instead I think, what can I learn from this, and how am I going to move forward and just do things differently and make sure that that never happens again.

Unfortunately, young cool athletes can really have a lot of influence on teenagers, and so it is really important that those athletes start modeling what should happen. As an influential skier in the freestyle game, I think it’s really important to promote wearing a helmet and that you can make it cool. You can be yourself.

We have a really unique program here at Tahoe Forest. The team focus is the highlight of what we do. Tahoe Forest Health System is working in a group effort with a lot of collaborative programs to try to really raise awareness about the importance of concussions—that they are brain injuries. We are doing it through baseline testing, through education, through research, and through a really collaborative team approach of taking care of our entire community.

When I go to the free ride competitions, my biggest wish for them is not to be number one on the podium, but to get down safely. And that goes for every kid out there. I remember back in the day, they were debating whether helmets were making people safer. They just concluded a 20-year study that says they indeed make you safer. There’s absolutely no reason that someone shouldn’t wear a helmet. So, there are cool ones out there. They are comfortable. If you get the right helmet and you love it, you’ll wear it. And there’s no reason to ever not wear it.

You realize that it’s not just about you, and that your life and your safety actually involve a lot more than just yourself. Whether it’s brothers, sisters, or your parents, you got to start caring for other people as well, just by taking care of yourself.

Hey, my name is JT Holmes. I’m a professional athlete and one of the founders of the BASICS program. Head over to high-fivesfoundation.org to check out more inspiring content. And remember, helmets are cool. Have fun out there.