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Seismograph between teeth – sport

For example Matthew Stafford. The Los Angeles Rams quarterback clips his mouthguard to his helmet when he gives his colleagues the tactics between plays. Then he takes it and sticks it between his teeth, he chews on it like an infant on a toy, then he sucks on it like a pacifier. The dental protector doesn’t seem particularly comfortable, but it has to be to protect the teeth – and to send important data to the medical department of the US Football League NFL: They want to understand what happens to the brain when they collide, and she needs data from the mouthguard for this.

Yes, you read that right: In the mouthguards of many NFL players this season there are sensors that record what exactly happens to a person’s head if they are knocked to the ground or collide with another player, a kind of seismograph and a new one Perspective, so to speak – sensors have been attached to helmets for years. “We want to know what’s going on inside the helmet and get closer to the goal of our research,” says NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills: “The mouthguard is the natural choice because it is close to the brain and allows us to see what is happening with happens to the head. ” The mouthguard is also more precise because it sits relatively firmly on the teeth; a helmet often goes crazy on impact.

Ten NFL franchises are participating in the study this season, which has recently been expanded to include college football. To put it very simply, the researchers equipped the mouthguard with sensors and then individually adapted it to the players’ jaws so that they do not notice any difference to their usual devices. The sensors collect data such as speed on impact, point of impact on the head, direction, intensity. In connection with video recordings, the researchers want to see what exactly happens with which vibration – and suggest changes to the rules or improvements to the equipment accordingly.

In 2013, the NFL paid out a billion dollars to former professionals, with one in three people suffering from brain defects, according to a study

You could say: wow! Especially since the principle can also be applied to other contact sports such as ice hockey, handball or basketball. But one could also say: It was about time. For years, the NFL had denied any link between collisions and serious head injuries. In 2013, the NFL bought itself out of the charge of having known about the dangers of violent clashes, accepted them and failed to inform the players by paying almost a billion dollars to former professionals.

In 2015, the NFL commissioned a study, the results were devastating: About every third NFL professional is likely to experience a serious brain disease. Boston University had found defects in 76 brains of former gamblers it examined; a total of 79 samples had been taken. In the previous five years, nine former professionals had killed each other, a possible connection with the degenerative consequences of the many collisions cannot be ruled out. The study not only had an impact on the professional league, but also on youth sport, because: Who lets their child play full contact football in view of these health prognoses?

Since then, the NFL has been a pioneer in analysis, and it has changed some rules in recent years: The medical department had found that many concussions happen when players lower their heads and ram other actors. It has therefore been banned since 2018. The rule change is controversial, the critics include not only traditionalists, who see the dangerous sport softened, but also doctors who observe that actors increasingly attack the legs of their opponents and cause serious injuries there.

Since 2015, the number of concussions has decreased by more than a third – thanks to new rules

Other points of criticism: Were changes brought about to reduce the risk of injury or because spectacular moves are more likely if the actors do not have to fear being brutally rammed to the ground? And: don’t you become more careless if you think nothing will happen because you are wearing helmets that are supposedly safer and tailored to your position? Be that as it may, the number of concussions has decreased by more than a third since 2015, and the five-step plan until you return to the field promotes better healing.

The face mask sensor is considered revolutionary because the studies can be expanded to include disciplines in which people play without a helmet – handball, basketball, soccer. “The goal is to learn more about the mechanisms of injury,” says Jennifer Langton, NFL health innovation manager: “The more data we have, the more we understand how injuries really happen – and the more we can take preventive action in the future. “

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