Head-Cracking Business

Concussions will never be eliminated for a simple reason: the human brain isn’t fixed in place. 

Even the best helmets protect against skull fractures and absorb impact – but they can’t stop the brain from colliding inside the skull, which is what causes a concussion.

The sports-entertainment industry glorifies speed, agility, and toughness – creating a culture where concussions aren’t just downplayed, they’re quietly incentivized. High-stakes contracts, parity-driven leagues, and locker room clichés equating silence with toughness reinforce this mindset. Players fear missing the decisive moment; coaches are under pressure to field their best lineup. But what’s truly at stake isn’t just short-term gains — it’s career longevity, long-term brain health, and life outside the game.

Trouble Beneath the Surface 

Among the challenges in concussion management is that irreversible brain damages do not require high-force impacts – head rotations, decelerations, or cumulation of lower-grade hits won’t sideline an athlete, but are enough to stir trouble beneath the surface. 

Athletes also respond differently to similar impacts, with symptom severity often unrelated to the force of impact. The constellation of symptoms includes unconsciousness, disorientation or dizziness – often signaled by head SHAAKE. Severe headaches, light sensitivity, speech impediment, sleep disruption, or memory loss can also sometimes appear up to 48 hours after impact.  

Even when external signs are subtle, the collision triggers a cascade of inflammatory mediators, disrupts oxygen and nutrient flow to brain cells, and sets off cellular stress responses. 

Regardless of how symptoms present, brain trauma unleashes a toxic inflammation and cell damaging cascade, resulting in measurable declines in both athletic and neurocognitive performance.

While acute brain trauma is serious in its own right, repeated head-impacts and poorly managed concussions can lead to persistent damage. Lingering symptoms risk evolving into Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disease linked to cognitive decline and drastic increases of depressive & suicidal thoughts.

The challenge is further compounded by the absence of objective image- or blood-based diagnostic biomarkers, and of sex-specific differences in risk and symptoms.

Time is running out, and a paradigm shift is warranted.

Minimizing the Unavoidable

Governing bodies and stakeholders have taken meaningful steps to make contact sports safer – namely implementing rule & policy changes and improving protective gear – but blind spots remain. 

• No-head impact policies: Even when strictly enforced, can’t prevent accidental collisions, head tackles to other parts of the body – which are just as dangerous for the tackler, or head rotation.
• Independent spotters: Still rely heavily on noticeable high-impact hits and symptoms, which leaves room for errors or bias – even when well-intentioned. Spotters also remain very rare outside pro leagues. 
• Padded helmet shells may reduce forces by 5% to 14%, which haven’t translated to meaningful drop in concussion rates. Worse, they may create a false sense of security, potentially encouraging more head contact.

Awareness is also growing among athletes and medical teams.

• Neck strengthening can stabilize the head and reduce whiplash under high-potential impacts.
• Devices like Qcollar may regulate cerebral blood flow to reduce intracranial pressures following hits.
• Neuromuscular warm-up routines can improve movement control and reduce risky patterns.

These are effective strategies – and they matter. But they don’t address the root cause of many concussions: repeated, unremarkable hits and rotational forces that often go unseen. To truly elevate athlete safety, we need better visibility, robust data, and smarter decision tools that go beyond the symptoms athletes are willing to show.

Every untracked hit is a warning missed. 

A Smarter Way Forward

Tools that reveal what the eyes can’t see

Smart mouthguards and headbands equipped with impact sensors  – like those from i1 Biometrics, Orb and Prevent Biometrics – represent an important step toward quantifying head impacts. But adoption remains limited, especially in youth and amateur sports. 

Their positioning (in the mouth or on the head) can introduce inconsistencies in data capture, and compliance is often low when the gear isn’t mandatory or comfortable.

Legacy brand like Riddell is also stepping in with InSite helmets, while next-gen platform like Bearmind tackles concussion prevention head-on. 

Bearmind’s sport-agnostic system uses 6-axis accelerometers embedded directly into mandatory protective gear to monitor both linear and rotational forces in real time – delivering live alerts to medical staff when critical thresholds are reached. And more importantly, it tracks cumulative impact over time, capturing the invisible wear and tear that often goes unnoticed.

That’s where real progress begins. 

The Bearmind platform detects up to 87% of concussions in real time, alerting medical staff and enabling timely, proactive interventions – e.g. no-contact practice sessions, neck-strengthening routines, or neurocognitive training.

Beyond detection, dual-task cognitive testing helps establish athletes’ baselines to support personalized diagnosis, rehabilitation, and return-to-play protocols.

In doing so, it supports a full continuum of care – starting long before any contact occurs.

From Innovation to Action

The future is bright – with saliva biomarkers, eye-tracking, and speech pattern analysis advancing objective diagnosis; and targeted nutritional interventions, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and EEG-assisted neurocognitive testing to accelerate recovery and guide safer return-to-play.

But innovation alone isn’t enough. Progress depends on complete buy-in – from athletes, coaches, medical teams, and institutions.

And the cultural shift has to begin from the ground-up – in grassroots leagues, where player’s safety-first culture can be planted. And there are precedents: half-visors in hockey, and soon neck guards – change comes when safety is normalized, not optional.

Organizations like the Concussion Legacy Foundation have played a critical role in raising awareness, advancing research through the national brain tissue biobank. Meanwhile, initiatives like Riddell’s and Denver Broncos Foundation to equip youth football teams show what’s possible when leagues take a proactive stance.

And the mission is even larger than sport – as risks of repeated head impacts extend to military and industrial or high-risk workers.

Let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. The next generation of high-performing athletes and workers deserves a smarter approach to brain safety.